• 




Class _J&£_L£U 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






PROBLEMS OF 
THE SPIRITUAL 



BY THE 

REVEREND ARTHUR CHAMBERS 

h 

ASSOCIATE OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON 
VICAR OF BROCKENHURST, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND 



Author of 

" Our Life After Death " "Man and the Spiritual World," 

and " Thoughts of the Spiritual" 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 






I LIBRARY otGONGK ESS 
Two Copies Receive 

APH 15 1908 
- jowneni envy 

■yjtpfi juc. Nu. 









Copyright, 1907, by 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 

Published September, 1907. 



To mark my appreciation of our long- 
continued friendship, and moreover, to 
thank him for the encouragement he 
has afforded me in the performance of 
a not altogether easy task, I dedicate 
this volume to the esteemed Friend 
who suggested the simple and apt title 
thereof. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

Page 

I. Can the Departed be objectively present ? 
If so, in what way can they manifest 
themselves to us as to be recognizable? I 

II. Is the fact that trickery and imposture 
have been associated with Spiritualism, 
a proof that it is the outcome of false- 
hood and credulity? 24 

III. Does the prohibition against inter- 
course with "familiar spirits," as given 
to the ancient Israelites, imply that all 
communion with the Spirit-world is for- 
bidden by God ? 28 

IV. How can it be explained that many of 
the communications alleged to come 
from discarnate beings are unsatisfac- 
tory, misleading and untruthful? 50 



CONTENTS 

Page 

V. Is there a danger in attending seances, 
on the ground that at such meetings 
evil and deceiving spirits may be at- 
tracted? 68 

VI. Will our earthly relationships be main- 
tained in the Other World? JJ 

VII. W 7 hy do not all the Departed manifest 
themselves to those whom they have left 
behind ? 92 

VIII. Will the fact that beings in Spirit-life 
are on different planes of life and ex- 
perience be an obstacle to re-union?. . . . 106 

IX. Apart from direct communications from 
them, how may we best realize that the 
Departed are still living and in relation- 
ship with us ? 119 

X. Are not such expressions as — "The sea 
gave up the dead which were in it," 
"Them which sleep" and "Those that 
are in the graves" — an indication that the 
New Testament writers regarded Death 
as a temporary cessation of conscious 
being? 127 



CONTENTS 



PART II. 

Page 

I. Objections against "The Larger Hope" 
considered. 

"The book— 'Our Life after Death' 
teaches Universalism. It leaves out the 
strong things Jesus Christ said. What 
is called 'the strong language of the 
Athanasian Creed' is our Lord's own 

teaching" 136 

(From Report in "Church Times" of 
March gth, 1906, of the Bishop of 
London's statement. See note at end 
of chapter.) 

II. "The Times of the Restitution of all 
things" 158 

III. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive" 161 

IV. "The Saviour of all men" 165 

V. "Our God is a consuming Fire" 169 



CONTENTS 

Page 

VI. What Greek word denoting "never- 
ending" could the writers of the New 
Testament have used, if the word alcovco? 
(translated "everlasting" and "eternal") 
will not sustain that signification? 175 

VII. Is there a danger, in regard to the Uni- 
versalist belief, of making the Benevo- 
lence of God dominate His Holiness and 
Justice in such a way as to constitute 
Him the Tolerator of evil? 183 

VIII. Is it right to pray for those who have 
departed this life as non-Christians? If 
so, what should be the character of our 
prayers for them ? 199 

IX. If Christians depart this life to be with 
Christ, how can our prayers benefit 
them ? Does He not know exactly what 
to do for them without our intercessions 

on their behalf? 214 

X. On what grounds can we base our be- 
lief that Jesus is not only pre-eminently 
a Son of God, but the Son of God, in the 
sense of being Divine? 220 



PREFACE 



It may help the reader to better understand 
the purport of this volume, if I briefly state the 
considerations which have led me to write it. 

There was a necessity for my doing so; I had 
no other means of discharging an obligation im- 
posed upon me. Let me explain. 

Some into whose hands this comes, are 
aware that I have previously published three 
volumes on the subject of the Spiritual World, 
which have had a very large circulation in this 
and other countries. The result has been a cor- 
respondence so overwhelmingly great, as to 
make it impossible for me to keep abreast of it. 
Thousands of letters have been sent to me by 
earnest ones from all quarters of the world. 
Amid the pressing duties of a ministerial life, I 
have strenuously set myself to reply to those 
letters; and a great number of them have been 
answered. But many have not. 

Among the latter, are those which contain 
questions, not only important to the writers in 
view of their search for truth and for the re- 



PREFACE 

moval of difficulties which are presented to 
their mind, but which, moreover, are incapable 
of being adequately answered within the cir- 
cumscribed limits of ordinary correspondence. 
Some of the letters submit a series of questions, 
the answering of which would involve the writ- 
ing of matter sufficient to form a booklet. 

Moreover, in many cases, questions which 
have been fully answered by me on several oc- 
casions, have again and again been submitted 
by other enquirers. It will thus be seen how a 
great pile of the "Unanswered" has persistently 
grown, without there being any possibility, in 
spite of all my efforts, of diminishing it. How 
could I answer those questioners? What could 
I do to rid myself of the unpleasant thought that 
some — not knowing the circumstances of the 
case — might be accounting me neglectful or dis- 
courteous? This book is an attempt to solve, or 
to partially solve, the difficulty. 

From the numerous questions sent to me, I 
have carefully selected such as I deem to be 
the most important and which have been the 
most often proposed; and then I have tried to 
answer them fully and exhaustively in the pages 
of this volume. It may be that those whose 
kind communications have elicited — until now 
— no response, will, after this explanation, ex- 
tend to me their forgiveness. 



PREFACE 

The other consideration which has impelled 
me to write this book is the desire to vindicate 
the position of those who embody in the Chris- 
tian Religion the ascertained facts of Psychic- 
life, and the "Larger Hope." The ranges of 
present-day knowledge and thought are larger 
and wider than those of the past. Science, dur- 
ing the last half-century, after having unfolded 
to us marvel after marvel with regard to the 
Physical, has of late directed her researches to 
the domain of the Spiritual. There, wonder 
after wonder has been disclosed. Psychic Phe- 
nomena have been carefully investigated, and 
their reality avouched by many of the foremost 
men of the day; until a new continent of life and 
possibility has been laid open before us, and 
a revealing light has been flung on the mystery 
of Human Being. 

Further, the mind of this present age has 
moved on to the acquirement of fuller and 
worthier conceptions of God, His character, and 
His purposes with respect to mankind. Men 
are no longer able to think of Him as He was 
presented by the School men and divines of by- 
gone ages. The crude and anthropomorphic 
notions of Him are fast disappearing. Many 
of the old religious doctrines — especially those 
which deal with Eschatology — have ceased to 
commend themselves to the intelligence and 



PREFACE 

the moral instincts of the day. Accepted with- 
out question in the past, as the integrant parts 
of Christian Truth, these doctrines have been 
found to voice, not the teaching of the Master 
Himself, but the unevolved ideas of those who 
interpreted His teaching. In a word, men's 
enlarged conception of their spiritual organiza- 
tion, and their realization that a non-physical 
realm of life and energy encompasses and inter- 
penetrates them, has caused them to re-cast 
their thoughts concerning God and Truth. 
Now, it is this fuller revealment of Spiritual 
realities, manifested in Psychic Phenomena, 
and this re-casting of ideas concerning God and 
the scope of His Gospel, which is causing re- 
ligious disquiet to some. 

This enhanced knowledge and wider thought 
are regarded as being incompatible with the 
teaching of Christianity. The persons to whom 
I refer are mentally disturbed by any present- 
ment of truth which differs from that which has 
been accepted by them. They have been 
trained to believe that the theological pro- 
nouncements and definitions of the Church or 
Body to which they have attached themselves, 
are the final utterances of God in respect to 
Divine Truth. They suppose that to question 
those pronouncements, and to imagine them 
capable of being altered or modified, is a sure 



PREFACE 

indication of declension from the Christian 
Faith. They are aware that the present-day 
conceptions, in regard to God and His pur- 
poses, and in regard to man and his interior 
constitution and relationship to the Spiritual 
Universe, are not in agreement with the con- 
ceptions of the generally accepted exponents of 
Christ's Religion who have lived since Bible- 
times. 

All this constitutes a very real difficulty to 
such Christians. Is this fuller knowledge con- 
cerning the Spiritual, and is this brighter and 
more hopeful outlook towards God and the 
Future, inimical to the Gospel which Jesus 
taught ? 

We believe it is not; and the other object in 
view in the writing of this book, is to try to 
show that the Gospel of Christ is so Divine and 
comprehensive a thing as to be capable of em- 
bodying all the acquisitions of knowledge and 
all the movements of men's minds to higher 
thought and aspiration. 

The Christian Religion, we believe, would 
cease to maintain its hold on mankind, were it 
not able, as God's great ocean of Revelation, to 
draw into Itself and absorb all the streams of 
Truth which flow through the channels of the 
Religions of the world, as well as those tribu- 
taries and brooklets of enlightenment which 



PREFACE 

from the uplands of human thought slowly, but 
surely, find their way into the streams. 

ARTHUR CHAMBERS. 
Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England. 
August, 1907, 



PART I. 

I. Our mother, just before she died, very calmly 
and emphatically declared that she saw and 
recognized several persons who had departed this 
life years before. Do you think this was merely 
a subjective experience, or were those departed 
ones actually and objectively present? And if the 
latter, how was she able to recognize them* see- 
ing that the physical form, by which alone she 
had known them, had been laid aside? 

In answer to the first of these questions, we 
say — Yes; we believe that persons can, after 
death, be objectively present, and possess the 
power, exercised under certain conditions, of 
manifesting themselves to those living in the 
earth life. We submit the reasons on which 
we ground this belief. 

I. There is a very strong presumption that 
this is so, arising from the fact that there has ex- 
isted throughout all past ages, and there exists 
now, an ineradicable conviction that, at times, 
the so-called "dead" return. 

Among all the races of mankind, civilized and 
uncivilized, and under all the differing phases 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of religious, or non-religious, thought, men 
have persistently believed in, and borne testi- 
mony to, the possibility of the departed mani- 
festing themselves; and that, in spite of all the 
efforts which have been made to prove the be- 
lief a foolish and groundless one. The science 
of the past (not the science of to-day) has ridi- 
culed the idea as being the outcome of supersti- 
tion and ignorance. The Church herself, with 
a curious lack of consistency, has labelled it as 
an unscriptural and a rather wicked notion. 
And yet, throughout the whole history of the 
race, men have pertinaciously clung to it, and 
no testimony borne to anything outside the or- 
dinary experiences of mankind, has ever been 
so great and so continuous as that which has 
been given in regard to appearances after 
death. 

This persistent conviction is significant. It 
points to fact as the basis upon which it rests. 
Why, we ask, if the departed have never re- 
turned, have men so persistently believed the 
opposite? 

The objector will answer, that this convic- 
tion, although so widespread, can only be 
classed among many other baseless ideas per- 
taining to ages of unenlightenment; and that 

2 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

as mankind advances in knowledge, this par- 
ticular notion will cease to command belief. 

The supposition is completely contradicted 
by present-day fact. The extraordinary ad- 
vance that has been made in science and gen- 
eral knowledge, during the past twenty or thirty 
years has neither removed nor shaken this con- 
viction in the minds of men; on the other hand, 
it has become enormously strengthened and in- 
tensified. The belief in the return of the de- 
parted, so far from dying out in the light of 
fuller knowledge, is more persistent and wide- 
spread to-day than ever it has been; and in 
the ranks of the believers are to be found some 
of the foremost men of science. In a word, the 
advance of knowledge has increased the belief. 
This is inexplicable on the supposition that the 
belief is founded on a fancy; it is to be accounted 
for, if it is built on the foundation of fact. 

Thus, the persistent conviction on the part of 
mankind that appearances after death do take 
place, is to us a very strong presumption (apart 
from all direct evidence) that such is the case. 
Had the alleged fact been impossible of verifica- 
tion, the belief in it would have died out, as 
have baseless notions, long ago. 

II. The verification, after careful investiga- 
tion, by scientific men, of the present-day facts 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of Psychic Phenomena, affords another strong 
reason for believing that the departed may re- 
turn to us. The idea of such return is no longer 
scouted by men who have given their attention 
to the matter as foolish and impossible. The 
deniers of the fact are for the greater part those 
who assume the unscientific attitude of antece- 
dently settling themselves in the conviction that 
the thing is impossible, and then of declining to 
make any enquiry, or to accept any evidence 
whatsoever on the subject. The pronounce- 
ments of such persons count for simply nothing 
at all. The opinion of the person who says — 
"The thing, I am convinced, is impossible; and 
therefore I will consider no evidence in support 
of it," — is so completely outside the radius of 
practical importance, that we may dismiss it as 
valueless, as we should the. opinion of one who, 
having antecedently come to the conclusion that 
the North Pole could not possibly exist, ignored 
every scientifically ascertained fact concerning 
the same. 

But we turn to the men who have given 
thought and attention to the subject; to men 
whose opinions are of weight, because, by cul- 
ture and profession, they are qualified to weigh 
evidence and estimate fact. I am referring to 
some of the most distinguished and well-known 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of the scientific men of the present time. They 
have investigated the existing facts of Psychic 
Phenomena, and have given to the world state- 
ments concerning them which have revolution- 
ized the ordinary ideas of men. We ask the 
thoughtful enquirer to "read, mark, learn, and 
inwardly digest" all that is contained in those 
two exhaustive volumes, which embody the re- 
sults of the scientific examination of Psychic 
Phenomena, by the late Professor Myers. 
("Human Personality; and its Survival of Bod- 
ily Death"). It will open the eyes of some to 
the possibilities of the spiritual. It will go very 
far towards making the thought of manifesta- 
tion after death a believable one. 

An absolute change has come over the mind 
of science, in regard to the spiritual and its 
possibilities. She, as represented by the ablest 
of her exponents, is no longer materialistic. She 
has at length reached the point of acknowledg- 
ing that it is impossible to account for certain 
experiences vouchsafed to many men and 
women on any hypothesis of the merely Physi- 
cal She has even gone the length of admitting, 
that apart, from the acknowledgment of that 
which within us and about us transcends the 
Physical, and which links us with the Spiritual, 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

many of the inherent powers and the experi- 
ences of thousands of our race are inexplicable. 
It may be asked — In regard to Science, what 
has brought about this change of front? Why 
has science, so materialistic, in the past, become 
now so pre-eminently the means by which men 
are so much better realizing the possibilities 
of spirit ? We answer — The fact of Psychic Phe- 
nomena, of late years, has become so persistent 
and demonstrable, that science has been unable 
any longer to ignore it. In the past, the fol- 
lowers of science, no less than the adherents to 
religion, have been handicapped against the ac- 
quirement of fuller knowledge, by prejudice and 
traditionalism. It is very different now. Both 
systems are learning that all the facts of human 
experience must be honestly faced, if truth is 
to be attained Many of the old conceptions in 
regard to religion are vanishing away, and bet- 
ter and truer ideas are taking their place. And 
the science of to-day has made admissions with 
respect to human life and experience, which 
would have been ridiculed by the scientific men 
of fifty years ago. The existence of the soul; 
its survival of bodily death, and the possibility 
of communication between those in spirit-life 
and those in earth-life, are no longer ideas 
which science proclaims to be groundless and 

6 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

incredible. There are many of our distinguished 
men of science, unlabelled as to religious creed, 
who, in consequence of a knowledge acquired 
through the investigation of Psychic Phenom- 
ena, have an intenser belief in the reality of the 
spiritual than many Christians who persuade 
themselves that they believe all the spiritual 
wonders recorded in the Bible. 

Thus, in the face of the admissions of science 
in regard to the spiritual; in fact of the enor- 
mous testimony borne by mankind to the effect 
that the departed may, and do return, which 
testimony has not been overthrown by scientific 
investigation, we are drawn to the conclusion 
that the re-appearance of those who have passed 
hence is a verifiable fact. 

III. An enormous amount of direct testimony 
has been borne by "all sorts and conditions" of 
men, as to the fact of appearances after death. 

Let any enquirer on this point but take the 
trouble to ask those with whom he may come 
into contact, if any such experience has come 
within the range of their knowledge, and we 
venture to say that ever}- other person so ques- 
tioned will recount some instance of a departed 
one having been seen, either by himself, or by 
some one whose testimony he accepts. It is 
only as we make enquiries, that we find out how 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

widespread is the experience with which we are 
dealing. Thousands never mention to others — 
save, perhaps, to their own circle — what they 
know in regard to this subject. They are 
afraid of being accounted weak-minded, or un- 
truthful, and so the testimony adduced, great 
at is is, is less than it would be if it were not 
for this fear of the scoffer. Moreover, it is a 
notable fact, that the ones who give their testi- 
mony as to any personal experience of manifes- 
tation after death, are convinced that their ex- 
perience was objectively real, and not to be at- 
tributed to hallucination. The following is an 
instance. An old gentleman (connected with 
the writer) lost his wife, to whom he was deeply 
attached. He felt the bereavement acutely. 
One morning, at the breakfast table, he told his 
sons he had had a strange experience; all the 
more strange to him, because, until then, he had 
deemed such a thing impossible. He, when 
lying awake, and thinking of other matters, had 
seen his departed wife standing beside his bed. 
She had smiled on him, and said, — "John, you 
will be with me in May." The sons pronounced 
the experience to be only a dream, or the out- 
come of overwrought imagination. The father 
most calmly asserted that it was not so, but an 
objective reality. His sons remained uncon- 

8 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cerned, and the old man never again alluded 
to the subject. Five or six months passed, and 
the father regained all his old cheerfulness and 
interest in life. An evening party was given by 
him to celebrate his birthday, and those present 
remarked how well he appeared to have recov- 
ered the shock of his wife's death. On the fol- 
lowing morning he was found dead in bed; and 
it was the month of May. There are thousands 
of recorded experiences similar to this, and we 
contend that it is more reasonable to regard 
them as based on fact, than on fancy; of being 
objective, rather than subjective. A person com- 
pletely sane, calm, and invariably truthful, de- 
liberately affirms that he has seen a dear one 
after death, and that the experience was not 
imagination. Those who have not had the ex- 
perience, or any like experience, as positively 
assert the opposite. But which statement, we 
ask, is of the more evidential value — that of 
the one who had the experience, or that of those 
who did not have it ? We do not usually attach 
much importance to the pronouncement of 
anyone concerning a subject, about which he 
acknowledges a total lack of experience, and a 
fixed conviction that no idea but his own can 
possibly be right. We drop him outside the 
reckoning, as not possessing the necessary data 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

upon which to come to a true conclusion. Thus, 
the testimony of one person who has had any 
experience of post-mortem appearances, is worth 
more in assisting us to come at the truth of 
the matter, than all the assertions of a hundred 
others, who have had no such experiences. We 
admit this principle in the concerns of every- 
day life. 

Again, if it is difficult to cast aside as unre- 
liable the testimony regarding an appearance 
after death of a person whom, in all other re- 
spects, we regard as sober minded and truth- 
loving, it is still more difficult to reject the tes- 
timony of several persons who conjointly and 
simultaneously have the same experience. 
There are a great number of verified instances 
of two, three, or more persons who have seen 
the departed at the same time, and in precisely 
the same way, so as to leave no room for the sup- 
position that the experience can be explained as 
hallucination. The writer himself has had such 
an experience. He saw, in company with an 
intimate friend, a manifestation which presented 
itself, in every detail, in precisely the same way 
to him as it did to his friend. If this experience 
is to be accounted for on the hypothesis of its 
being merely subjective, then we are shut up to 
the conclusion that two absolutely independent 

10 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

minds are suddenly and simultaneously so af- 
fected, as to similarly see, in every particular, 
something which had no existence except in 
imagination. We ask, in the face of this con- 
current experience, which is the more reason- 
able explanation — that the experience is to be 
attributed to a disordered mind, or to objective 
fact? Thus, we have, in the direct testimony 
adduced by thousands of our fellow-beings, an- 
other strong reason for accepting as true, that 
the departed may, and do, at times manifest 
themselves to us. 

IV. We have the statements of the Bible 
that persons, after death, have objectively mani- 
fested themselves. The testimony of the Bible 
on this point is very emphatic, and it ought to 
settle the question at once for those who profess 
to believe that book. And yet, strange to say, 
the ones least disposed to admit the possibility 
of post-mortem appearances are very often those 
whose religion, as Christians, is founded on the 
fact of appearances after death. 

The Christian Religion rests on the acknowl- .- 

edged truth that our Lord Jesus Christ was 
seen, after death, by a considerable number of 
persons. He was seen under circumstances 
which preclude the possibility of accounting for 
His appearances on the hypothesis of merely 

ii 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

mental impressions. He was, moreover, seen 
in such a way as to demonstrate the fact that 
He had passed beyond the restrictions of the 
Physical, and was living in the environment of 
the Spiritual. He could suddenly present Him- 
self before the eyes of astonished apostles, in 
a room whose door was closed and barred. He 
could instantly vanish from their sight; could 
quickly transport Himself from place to place; 
could change His form; be unrecognized for a 
while by those who knew Him well, and could 
cause Himself to soar upward in seeming con- 
travention of the law of gravitation. In a 
word, from a world, transcending the Physical, 
into which He had entered at death, He pre- 
sented Himself to men and women still on the 
earth-plane; and they acknowledged the fact, 
and the Christian Religion was built on it. No 
Christian, after this, can consistently and logi- 
cally doubt the possibility of manifestations 
from the world of spirit. 

If the Bible be true in stating that Samuel 
and Moses and Jesus, and "many of the saints 
which appeared unto many" at the time of the 
crucifixion, and the "fellow-servant of thy 
brethren, the prophets," who came to St. John 
at Patmos — presented themselves after death, 
then we contend that the Christian Religion it- 

12 



t 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

self demands us to believe that the so-called 
"dead" may, and do, return. If we deny that 
such manifestations are possible, we have cut 
away from ourselves all reasons for believing the 
scripture records. The spiritual world to-day is 
no different from what it always has been. 
What was possible and actual in the past is so 
to-day. And the accumulated evidence of this 
age in regard to spiritual realities confirms this 
statement. 



We proceed to answer the other question sub- 
mitted above: — How was the mother, who on 
her death-bed declared she saw and recognized 
departed ones, able to recognize them; seeing 
that the physical body, in which only she had 
previously known them, had been laid aside? 
There are two ways by which a being passed 
into spirit-life can manifest himself and make 
himself recognizable to those in earth-life. — (a) 
By the clothing of his spirit-presence with a 
thvught-form, in such a manner that he assumes 
the appearance in which he had been previously 
known by those to whom he manifests, (b) By "? 
building up around his spirit-presence a tem- 
porary encasement, constructed from particles ' 
and emanations drawn from physical bodies. 

13 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

This latter is commonly called "materializa- 
tion." 

With regard to the first of these two methods 
of manifestation. The appearance produced as 
a thought-form is not physical, nor can it be 
physically perceived. It is a creation of 
thought. The excarnate being, knowing that 
he would be unrecognized, except in the appear- 
ance in which he had been known in earth-life, 
thinks of himself in that way, and his thought 
takes form, and his spirit-presence is invested 
with that form. Thus a being in spirit-life is 
able to manifest himself in different ways to 
different persons, in accordance with the man- 
ner in which he may think of himself. If he 
were to appear to one who had only known him 
in earth-life as a young man, he would think of 
himself as such, and be presented in that form. 
If he were to manifest to another who had 
known him in later life, he would mentally draw 
the picture of himself in that condition and be 
seen in correspondence with that thought. 
When the prophet Samuel was seen after death, 
it was in the form of an "old man" (i Sam. 
xxviii. 14.) — the form in which alone he would 
have been recognized. As to this power of the 
mind to produce form, and how it does so, we 
know but little as yet; but there are many indi- 

14 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cations that the fact is coming within the bounds 
of scientific demonstration. It is known that, 
pervading all space and interpenetrating all 
physical matter, is a subtle element — the iEther. 
It may be that thought-forms are the result of 
mental energy, projected as vibratory motions, 
upon the setheric atmosphere, and that they 
register thereon the impressions and images 
created in the mind. There seems to be no 
greater difficulty in supposing the aether cap- 
able of registering a mind image, than in know- 
ing that the sensitized plate of the photographer 
can register the likeness of a physical object. A 
spirit-being appears to possess the power, not 
only of projecting these mind-images which he 
creates upon the setheric atmosphere in which 
he has his being, but of so identifying himself 
with the projected image, as to merge, for a 
while at least, his spiritual self into it. He is 
seen, then, in a thought-form of his own creat- 
ing. Thus, in the spirit-world, our environment, 
and ourself as we appear to others, is mainly de- 
termined by our mind. 

If this be so, it may be asked — How can non- 
physical thought-forms be seen by one whose 
vision of objective realities is dependent upon 
the physical eyes? In other words,— -How can 
a spirit-being who has enwrapped himself in a 

IS 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

thought-form be seen by those still living in the 
earthly body? The answer is — By means of the 
faculties of the interior spirit-body. Within our 
outer physical body lies this spirit-body — the 
encasement of our spirit-self. St. Paul, writing 
on this subject, in i Cor. xv. 44, states — a eaTi 
cco/ia tyvxMov, teal eari aayfia 7rvevfjLaTt,/c6v" — 
— there is a natural body (i. e. a body pertaining 
to this life only), and there is (i. e. now) a spirit- 
ual body. Spirit and spirit-body constitute 
what we call "soul." A man after death is an 
excarnate being — a spirit; but he is not a shape- 
less entity, a fluidic essence; he has a bodily 
form; he is in a spirit-body. This spirit-body 
possesses faculties, which correspond with the 
faculties of the physical body, but transcend 
them. The powers of sight and hearing in the 
spirit-body are intensified. The eyes and ears 
of the physical body can be sensitive to only a 
limited number of vibrations in regard to sight 
and sound. The faculties of the spirit-body on 
the other hand, are capable of receiving cotheric 
vibrations; whereby sights invisible to physical 
eyes, and sounds inaudible to physical ears are 
perceptible to the spiritual organization. The 
normal condition of the spirit-body, while en- 
cased within the physical, is undevelopment. 
The latent powers are there, but their close as- 

16 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

sociation for a while with the physical body 
places them under restriction. The inherent 
capabilities of the soul-man are at a disadvan- 
tage in exercising themselves through the en- 
vironment of the physical man. The bright 
electric light can shine but dimly through the 
coarse, enveloping medium of a London fog. 
There is a likeness between the condition of 
our spirit-body and that of the physical body 
of a child shortly before birth. The latter has 
all the potentialities of perceiving sights and 
sounds. It has eyes and ears; but until birth 
they are unopened. The pre-natal conditions 
of existence afford no scope for the exercise of 
those powers. Birth to it means a quickening 
and an opening of already existing faculties. It 
becomes, then, en rapport with a world of physi- 
cal sight and sound. 

To us, physical death involves a similar ex- 
perience. Death removes from us the restric- 
tions of the physical. By it, the body of our 
spirit-self is brought into adjustment, and is 
made capable of functioning in an environment 
where the possibilities of spiritual seeing and 
hearing surpass the possibilities of the physical. 
After death, the conditions of being become 
altered : then we live and move in the domain of 
the setheric, and the horizon of perception, of 

17 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

observation and inherent power becomes enor- 
mously extended. 

Thus the "resurrection" (the anastasis, the 
advance) which Christ referred to, in His argu- 
ment with the Sadducees, means the liberation 
of the spirit-body from the obstructive connec- 
tion with the physical, and the exercise of 
higher powers by the spiritual man. But this 
opening and quickening of the faculties of our 
interior spirit-body takes place, sometimes, be- 
fore death. Persons, still resident in the earthly 
body, at times see and hear that which physical 
eyes and ears are incapable of perceiving. From 
beginning to end, the Bible is full of such in- 
stances. The spiritual beings who were seen 
by patriarchs, seers and others were not seen 
through the mediumship of the physical eyes, 
but by an abnormal opening of the sight of the 
spirit-body. "Lord, open his eyes that he may 
see," prayed Elisha, in regard to the young 
man, whose physical eyes were insensible to 
the nearness and reality of the spiritual (II 
Kings vi. 17). And the opening of his eyes 
disclosed to him wonders beyond the ken of 
the physical. There can be no doubt that the 
reason why our Lord selected St. Peter, St. 
James and St. John to be witnesses of that 
spiritual revealment on the Mount of Trans- 

18 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

figuration, was because they alone of all the 
Apostles were so spiritually constituted as to be 
clairvoyantly and clairaudiently capable of see- 
ing and hearing the spiritual visitants who there 
manifested themselves. In the case of the 
mother who declared, just before she died, that 
she saw and recognized departed ones, we be- 
lieve that there was a quickening, an opening, 
of the faculties of her interior spirit-body, by 
which she was made capable of perceiving the 
presence of those persons. Those dear ones had 
been drawn to that death-chamber by the mag- 
netic power of love We dare believe that the 
great All-Father of Love commissioned them 
to come, in order to remove the "sting of 
death," and to mitigate that feeling of strange- 
ness which must come to a human soul, in pass- 
ing from the conditions of the physical to those 
of the spiritual. The spirit-friends wanted the 
dying woman to know they were with her. They 
pictured themselves as they knew she was think- 
ing of them. In so doing they enwrapped their 
spiritual selves in thought-forms. Others in the 
death-chamber saw them not. The eyes of their 
spirit-bodies were unopened; and like Balaam, 
under those conditions, they were conscious of 
no angel beside them. The mother saw the 
God-sent visitants. Her indwelling spirit-body, 

19 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

feeling the first throb of expanding life, received 
the "Ephphatha" of God, and looking through 
the crumbling walls of the physical, she saw the 
spiritual. 

Apart from the creation of thought-forms, 
those who have passed hence can manifest 
themselves to those on earth in another way. 
By means of materialisation. There is an incon- 
trovertible mass of evidence to prove that it is 
possible, under certain physical conditions, for 
a spirit-being to present himself as encased in 
a temporarily assumed physical body. Material- 
ization is a verifiable fact; it has been attested 
by some of the foremost scientists and investi- 
gators of the present time. Of course, there is 
a considerable section of mankind which is un- 
convinced in regard to it, and it is absolutely 
hopeless to try to convince such. Persons of 
this class know little or nothing about the sub- 
ject; they do not want to know, and moreover, 
they are antecedently positive that such a thing 
could never be. We are not concerned about 
them. They are simply lagging behind the as- 
certained knowledge of the day; the fact of ma- 
terialization will be admitted by them before 
long, and then will come to them a startling 
revelation as to the possibilities of spirit. It is 
for the information of those who are prepared 

20 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

to enquire and to accept investigated and veri- 
fied facts, that we are writing. Materializations 
have taken place, and are constantly taking 
place, under conditions and circumstances which 
shut out the possibility of hallucination or im- 
posture. The writer, in the presence of a clergy- 
man and others, has seen, on the same evening, 
two such materializations (the one of a child 
and the other of a man) in the barely-furnished 
parlor of an artisan's cottage. The whole pro- 
cess of materialization and de-materialization 
was seen. And testimony similar to this has 
been adduced by scientific men. 

It will be asked — How can a spirit material- 
ize? By taking the aura, which is matter in a 
fluid condition, as it exhales from the physical 
bodies of persons, and consolidating and con- 
structing this around the spirit-self in such a 
way as to form a temporary physical encase- 
ment; which encasement is as appreciable by 
the eyes and the touch as any ordinary physical 
body. This aura is similar in appearance to the 
mist-like exhalation which can be seen arising 
from a hard-driven horse on a frosty day. It is 
physical matter in a gaseous state; and from all 
persons it is constantly exhaling. Some bodies 
give it off more freely than others; and those 
with whom this is the case constitute the 

21 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

"mediums," the ones so essential to materiali- 
zation. When a number of persons are together 
in a room in which this aura is confined, the con- 
ditions are favorable for materialization. A 
spiritual being can collect it, can draw it to him- 
self, can consolidate and mould it, and build it 
up around himself as a body physically sub- 
stantial and tangible And more than this — 
the enhanced power of mind and the formative 
energy possessed by it, enables the spirit being, 
desirous of being recognized by those to whom 
he is manifesting, to impress upon the structure 
which he has temporarily built for himself, the 
form and characteristics of that picture of him- 
self which he has antecedently created in his 
mind. 

The adaptation of physical matter by a spirit, 
for the purpose of manifestation to those whose 
vision does not extend beyond the physical, 
would seem, from what has been observed, to 
be not granted to all. Moreover, a spirit ap- 
pears to possess no power of retaining for any 
length of time the materialized body he may 
have formed. In the personal experience to 
which I have alluded, the little child who ma- 
terialized at arms' length before us, was heard 
by all of us to say — "I cannot keep the power; 
it is going;" and we saw the form that had 

22 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

touched us, and had kissed the mother who was 
present, melt and disappear. May not the ex- 
planation be, that a spiritual being, although, at 
times, permitted by the Father-God to come 
again into relationship with the physical, is not 
allowed to remain therein? May this not be the 
reason why the spiritual visitants seen by the 
ones oi Bible times suddenly vanished, and why 
the Christ, when He appeared in that room at 
Emmaus "vanished out of their sight" ? 

We regard, therefore, materialization, not as 
a normal experience of spirit-beings, but as a 
means permitted to some to lift the dark 
shadow flung by death, and to verify the words 
of Jesus, "They all live unto God." 



23 



II. Is the fact that trickery and imposture have 
been associated with spiritualism, a proof that 
it is the outcome of falsehood and credulity? 

No; and such reasoning is wholly inconse- 
quent. Throughout the history of the world, 
falsehood has been constantly associated with 
truth; but while it ha& damaged the cause of 
truth, it has constituted no real objection 
against the truth itself. A thing may be true, 
and as such, commend itself to persons of the 
highest intelligence., and yet may become so 
mixed up with that which is false and foolish, 
as to cause the indiscriminating observer to be 
unable to perceive the truth because of the 
falsehood. It has ever been so; nay more, it 
seems as if the greater and more important any 
truth is, the more does it lend itself to the pos- 
sibility of admixture with error and falsehood. 
Take, e. g., the greatest of all truths — that which 
is connected with the person and character of 
God. No truth has ever been so overlaid with 
error, so encrusted with superstition, and so 
associated with untruth, as this truth. Yet the 

24 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

truth itself concerning God is not discarded by 
us because of this. The honest "seeker after 
God" tries to dissociate the truth from the false- 
hood. Take another instance — the Christian 
Religion. We believe that it has its foundation 
in that which is essentially true. 

Its founder called Himself "the Truth." 

And yet the vilest deeds and some of the 
greatest impostures have been practiced in its 
sacred name. Good men and women have been 
persecuted, imprisoned and burnt at the stake by 
the professors of it. All sorts of ecclesiastical 
frauds and deceptions have been resorted to 
for the purpose of upholding the authority of 
the Church, and of stimulating the religious cre- 
dulity of the masses. 

"Very shocking!" says the man who has en- 
lightened moral instincts, but is not a discrimi- 
nator, "the whole thing is falsehood and evil." 
He makes a mistake. 

He allows the increment of error and false- 
hood, which has been imposed on truth, to blind 
him to the truth itself. In regard to Religion, 
to Science and a thousand and one other things, 
the truth exists in spite of all the falsehood 
which may have been associated with it. 

The case is precisely the same with respect 
to spiritualism. The thing itself is true. The 

25 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

phenomena connected with it are verifiable 
facts. 

The testimony of thousands of persons now 
living — including that of some of the foremost 
scientific men — has been adduced, that these 
phenomena have been witnessed by them under 
conditions making trickery, or hallucination, an 
impossibility. The truth of the thing can be, 
and has been, proved. Tricksters and impostors 
may from time to time be detected in their dis- 
honest practices in the name of spiritualism, 
and rightfully made to answer the charge in the 
law courts; judges and counsel in their ignor- 
ance of present-day facts, and their anxiety to 
provoke the laugh of an uninformed crowd, 
may cast ridicule upon the thing; but the fact 
remains that there are to-day great numbers of 
enlightened and cultured persons — men and 
women of sound discriminating power — who 
are believers in spiritualism, in spite of all their 
antecedent prejudices against it. 

These are not the class who would openly 
avow their belief in a thing which has no basis 
but in falsehood and sham. 

We admit that in some cases — in many cases, 
if you like — spiritualism has become associated 
with impostors and rascals. But what of that? 
The same thing can be said of Religion, of the 

26 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Medical Profession, and of a host of other 
things. We must discriminate between what 
is true and what is false. Religion is not labelled 
as "imposture and humbug," because unbeliev- 
able dogmas, as parasites, have fastened them- 
selves upon it, and religious charlatans have 
endangered its reputation. Nor are the sciences 
of medicine and astronomy accounted as non- 
sense, because there are quacks and fortune- 
tellers. 

The trickery and imposture which have some- 
times been associated with spiritualism afford 
no argument against the latter, but only against 
the falsification of it. The true spiritualist, no 
less than the true Christian and the true 
scientist, deplores that the truth he holds should 
at times be subject to the invasion of misrepre- 
sentation and falsehood. But so it is. The ex- 
perience of the past has taught us that no truth 
is so conditioned as to be safeguarded against 
an association with stupidity, error and evil. 

The wise man is he who seeks for the truth, 
and is not misled and made purblind by any 
falsehood he may detect in company with it; 
but who discriminates between the two, and 
separates the true from the false. 



2 7 



III. The prohibition given by God to the an- 
cient Israelites, that no communication should be 
held with "familiar spirits," is — to my mind — a 
proof that such communication was, and is, pos- 
sible. But does not the prohibition also imply that 
all intercourse with the Spiritual World is con- 
trary to the will of God? 

The first of these two conclusions is right; 
the other is wrong. If it be acknowledged that 
God forbade persons to hold communication 
with spiritual beings, it must also be acknowl- 
edged that this communication could be effected; 
unless we commit ourselves to the absurdity of 
supposing that the Almighty solemnly charged 
men not to do that which they could not pos- 
sibly do. If there be no such thing as com- 
munion between beings in this world and beings 
in the spirit-world, then there would seem to 
be no more sense in this prohibition than there 
would in one that commanded men not to jump 
over the moon. The point is an important one 
in regard to the attitude assumed towards spirit- 
ualism by many Christians. 

There are many good and earnest persons 

28 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

who profess to believe the statements of the 
Bible, and are also convinced that this prohibi- 
tory command is a Divine one, who, neverthe- 
less, scout as being foolish the idea of communi- 
cation with the spiritual. "The thing is an im- 
possibility," say they. "The departed cannot 
under any circumstances or any conditions re- 
establish intercourse with those whom they left 
behind. An impassable barrier is set up be- 
tween us in this life and all others in spirit-life." 
But, surely, this is a very illogical position to 
take ! If it be true that there is this "impassable 
barrier" between the two worlds, of course, it 
cannot be passed. Then why tell persons not to 
pass it? A wholly unnecessary command! A 
restrictive law is not required, except in respect 
to things which men can do. Thus we account 
the prohibition itself as implying the possibility 
and fact of communication with spirit-beings. 
There is another class of Christians, who per- 
ceive the illogical position of those to whom we 
have just referred, and endeavor to explain the 
matter by resorting to what, for convenience 
sake, we may term the "Diabolic" theory. Ac- 
cording to them, the Devil is at the bottom of 
all intercourse between us and the Other World. 
Spiritualism is, therefore, of course, his direct 
work. 

29 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

They tell us that communication is possible 
between terrestrial and spiritual beings; but 
that the spiritual beings who come into contact 
with us are all bad ones; — agents in the service 
of the great and very powerful Devil. No good 
spirit, no departed loved one, between whom 
and ourself a bond of love exists, is ever al- 
lowed by God (we are told) to come near us, 
to comfort us, help us, and affect us for good 
by the projection to us of the distillations of 
his ascending mind and spirit. Oh! no; such a 
thought is supposed to be a disparagement of 
the work and power of the Holy Ghost. 
(Though why it should be so in that case, more 
than in the case of those in this world who help 
and bless each other, we cannot see.) 

No; only the evil spirits are permitted to 
come to us; the "barrier" between us and the 
Spiritual World is impassable for all the good, 
but passable for the crew of evil. "Did not God 
forbid all intercourse with familiar spirits, be- 
cause of thisf" ask they. 

The answer which suggests itself to the or- 
dinary, common-sense individual is, — "How 
strange! how very contradictory it seems, that 
God should let the veil between this world and 
the other be drawn at all, if only the bad, and 

30 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

none of the good, are suffered to pass through 
it to us !" 

Our friends have yet to learn that intercourse 
with the Spiritual World involves exactly that 
which is involved in our intercourse with per- 
sons belonging to this world; viz., we may come 
into contact with the good, bad and indifferent. 
Society in the Spirit World is not, as some have 
supposed, composed only of two great classes* — 
the good and the bad. 

Between the conditions described by these 
two terms lie "all sorts and conditions" of spirit- 
beings. There are men and women passed into 
Spirit-life, who exhibit there as much variety in 
mind, character and spirit, as do the men and 
women who move among us here. There are 
those who have passed hence with the spiritual 
side of them wholly undeveloped. They are "of 
the earth, earthy." Many of them, unfitted for 
the new life, are eager to re-establish relations 
with the old. There are others in whom as yet 
the spiritual is but slowly developing. These 
for a while, at all events, will retain many of 
their imperfect moral characteristics and their 
limitations of knowledge. There are still others 
who in the ascending scale stand at different al- 
titudes of moral excellence, wisdom and spirit- 
uality. A great mass of widely-differing indi- 

31 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

viduals is that inconceivable aggregation of be- 
ings in the Spiritual World; as widely-differing 
from one another in knowledge, thought and 
cultivation as are the men and women who con- 
stitute the population of a continent. 

Now, if this fact as to the variety which char- 
acterizes life and experience in the Spirit World 
be realized, we shall be able to form some true 
ideas of the possibilities connected with inter- 
course between that world and this. The door 
between the two worlds has been opened — and 
is still open — in some cases and under certain 
conditions. 

The denial of that involves the rejection of 
the persistent testimony of mankind throughout 
the centuries — a testimony more persistent and 
emphatic to-day than ever it has been; the re- 
jection of the Bible statements which affirm the 
fact, and moreover, the rejection of the results 
of careful modern scientific investigation which 
go to verify the statements of that book. "Quite 
so," says the supporter of the "Diabolic" theory, 
"there is communication to us from the Spirit- 
World, but only the devils ever come to us from 
it." "But why only they?" we ask. Is it not op- 
posed to all ideas of the fitness of things, that 
God should permit the opening of the door of 
the spiritual only to let loose on us the beings 

32 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

who will seek to harm us? That is not what 
He does when, in this lower earth-life, He opens 
the doors of communication between us and 
others. That was not what His Christ did when 
He opened the door of the Spiritual on the 
Mount of Transfiguration and in the garden of 
Joseph. Through that open door came no 
devils to men and women, but departed Moses 
and Elijah and God's angels. What a dreadful 
state of affairs it would be, if God had granted 
us in earth-life only to associate with the evil! 
What a fearful conception of God is that which 
thinks of Him as opening the door of the 
spiritual solely to let loose the Devil and his 
crew on us ! An idea such as this savors to us 
of dishonor to God. 

How much more consistent is it to believe 
that our Father-God, in granting to those who 
are in spirit-life the power of sometimes coining 
to us who are in earth-life, has granted it not 
only to the bad, but also to the good and others ! 
And may it not be that the reason why at times 
He allows to us in earth-life this association 
with good, bad and indifferent spirit-beings, is 
to bring home to our feebly-working minds the 
true significances of Life Beyond? And may 
not another reason be, that the contact of such 
with us will, in some way or another, be made 

33 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

to contribute to God's great purpose of good 
in regard to them? Suppose it be so — suppose 
these constitute the two great objects for God's 
allowing of this contact of the Spiritual with the 
Physical World, — then how all-important be- 
comes the matter! 

From good, bad and indifferent spirits we 
may realize great truths which, perchance, we 
did but imperfectly realize from the earthly 
preachers and teachers — viz., that the Other- 
Life is but a development from the earth-life; 
that God's law and correspondence is inviola- 
ble, making men and women in spirit-life (for a 
while, at least) no more and no less than they 
have made themselves to be in earth-life; and 
that the pronouncement — "He that is unjust, let 
him be unjust still, and he that is holy, let him 
be holy still" — is no mere sentence of punish- 
ment for the bad and reward for the good, but 
the Divine proclamation to us that all reaping 
will answer to the sowing. Yes, and these 
spirits, good and bad and indifferent, may come 
to us as God's object-lessons on these eternal 
truths. From those poor, debased, earth- 
bound spirits, who have been seen by many as 
haunting the scenes of their former vice, with 
the desire for the low, the sensual and the un- 
spiritual still dominating them — we may learn, 

34 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

better than from any manual on Hell-Fire and 
damnation, what an evilly-directed life really 
means. From the frivolous, silly, uninformed 
spirits, who startle us by their ignorance of 
those truths which our better-trained soul both 
knows and accepts, we may learn the danger — 
the awful danger — of starving in earth-life the 
spirit-part. 

Transferred though they be to the world of 
mind and spirit, their knowledge of God and 
Divine things is less, as yet, than ours. Yes, 
and we may learn the same great significances 
of life from those higher ones in spirit-life who 
come to us at times — those souls who when on 
earth were loved and prized because, like the 
Master, they helped and blessed and exhaled 
sweetness. They, too, come, because the spirit- 
ual life is but a continuance, a development of 
the earth-life. Death has not changed their 
being; it did but alter their environment. The 
same thoughts of love, and the same desire to 
help and bless are within them as of old. Their 
present has been moulded by their past. Like 
departed Moses on the Mount with Jesus, they 
show that the trend of the mind on earth is the 
trend of the mind beyond. 

And what (as we said just now) if this open- 
ing of the door of the spiritual to these de- 

35 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

veloped and undeveloped ones on the other side, 
be made to further God's purpose of good in 
respect to them! The world of spirit is no prov- 
ince of life and experience detached from and 
unrelated to this Physical World. The two are 
co-related. The former is as much a part of 
the vast Empire of our Father-God, and as 
closely connected with this Physical World, as 
India is a part of King Edward's empire and 
connected with England. Nay, more so; for 
we, while still living on earth, have our being 
in two worlds — the Physical and the Spiritual. 

Moreover this fact of the consolidarity of 
God's universe — that no part of it is detached 
from any other part, and that interdependence 
is the Divine Law of all being — should make 
us realize that all provision made by God for 
blessing is made in view of the whole, and not 
in view of any part only. The true conception 
of the Christ is a magnificent one. In the par- 
ticular, He is God's Provision for blessing man- 
kind. True, but the blessing is to affect the 
whole universe. How those words of St. Paul 
voice this truth as to consolidarity — "That God 
might gather together in one all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in 
earth. . . . that He might fill all things" (Eph. i. 
10 and iv. 10) ! How they dwarf into in- 

36 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

significance the notions of some as to the now 
salvability of countless myriads in the Empire of 
God. 

And, of course, this view of the connectedness 
of each sphere of life with every other sphere of 
life, will considerably modify our idea as to why 
we should be Christians. The raison a" etre 
which is so commonly given is, that we may 
thereby be saved from a wrath to come, and re- 
ceive a great blessing for ourselves. That is 
not the true raison oV etre. The blessing which 
comes to anyone, individually, from union with 
Christ, was never meant to be an end in itself. 
The blessing was given to be extended. That 
blessed one is not a detached being; he stands 
related to others — to the whole universe. Never 
will he fulfil the reason of his calling, until some- 
how and somewhere, in this life or some other 
life, he has caused his blessing as a tributary 
stream of effort for others' good to run into 
that great mainstream of God's purpose of bless- 
ing all. 

In the light of this truth of the connectedness 
of each with all others, and of this world with 
the Spiritual World, is it not likely that we on 
earth, by prayer and uplifting thoughts at all 
times, and by actual intercourse sometimes, 
may be able to help and bless discarnate ones? 

37 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

There is another reason for believing that we 
may help these ones. 

It arises from the fact of the enormous num- 
ber there must be on the other side who stand in 
need of help. 

It must be so, unless we are prepared to 
think that death forever fixes the character and 
unalterably determines the destiny of all who 
pass thither. The brighter theology of this age 
has discarded the old notion that beings must 
remain throughout eternity what they are at 
the time of physical dissolution. Though death 
works no miracle of moral transformation in 
regard to any, the mercy and love of God puts 
no soul outside the purpose of advancement and 
ultimate salvation. 

According to the Master, the "lost" things 
are not forever to remain "lost," nor are the 
"dead" things never to be made "alive again." 
Now, the vast majority of those who pass from 
earth-life into spirit-life are either what Christ 
would have called "lost" or "dead" ones, or 
they are undeveloped ones, mentally, morally 
and spiritually. Millions face the realities of 
the Spiritual World with no sense of relation- 
ship to God, and are dead, or all but dead, to 
that which constitutes life in the spirit. Other 
millions there are whose minds, whose charac- 

38 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ters and whose spirits are such as to make the 
highest life impossible to them, so long as they 
remain unridded of imperfection. Think of an 
enormous ladder whose foot rests on the earth, 
and whose top touches the summit of an Alp. 
The ladder represents the ascent to that possi- 
ble moral and spiritual perfection, defined by 
Jesus in the words — "Ye therefore shall be per- 
fect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. v. 
48). Its topmost rung represents that prom- 
ised perfection; its bottom-most rung that point 
of moral and spiritual attainment which is 
reached by the great bulk of mankind at the 
time they pass into spirit-life; while the inter- 
vening rungs of that ladder denote those 
spheres of ascension through which every soul 
must pass on its way to the goal of being. The 
illustration will give us some idea of the great- 
ness of the goal which a Father-God has marked 
out for the creatures His love enwraps. 

The number of those rungs to be trodden will 
suggest the folly of neglecting in the earth-life 
the teaching of our spirit-self to do the work 
of mounting Godward; and it will divest those 
words of the Apostle of that ring of hopeless- 
ness which a certain theology has imported into 
them, and will invest them with another mean- 
ing — "Now is the accepted time;" the height is 

39 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

great, and the rungs are many ! Yes, and it may 
lead us to realize how great — how inconceiv- 
ably great — must be the multitude of discar- 
nate ones who cry to others — to us, perchance, 
— who have reached the higher rungs, to help 
them in their climbing upward. 

An inconceivably great multitude? Yes; pic- 
ture it, if you can. It has been estimated that 
about 44,000 persons die on this earth in every 
month of the year. Think of this death-harvest 
of the years, the centuries and the millenniums. 
Think of that mighty stream of human souls 
which has been pouring, and is still pouring, 
into the world of spirit, and then ask yourself — 
"How many of those souls have scaled the lad- 
der and are ripe for Heaven?" The answer will 
be — "Very few, in comparison with the hosts at 
the base of the ladder." 

Is it, then, a groundless belief to think that in 
a universe bearing the divine hall mark of con- 
solidarity, we on the plane where the spiritual 
and physical intermingle, may play some part 
in the Divine Purpose of helping and blessing 
the world of the spiritual? We think not. We 
dare believe that that interview between the 
Christ in the earth-life and Moses and Elijah 
in the spirit-life on that mountain of Palestine, 
led the lawgiver and the prophet to mount to 

40 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

higher rungs of Divine knowledge. We know 
of actual cases, in which poor, earth-bound 
spirits have been seen and heard by clairvoyant 
and clairaudient persons, and have asked the 
latter for their prayers and uplifting thought 
influences. "Pray for me ! pray for me !" said 
one of these undeveloped ones from the World 
of Spirit, to a Christian friend I know. "I will," 
was the reply — "Every day I will pray that you 
may find light and peace. Every time I kneel 
at God's Holy Altar, too, I will pray for you." 
That gentleman saw that spirit once again, and 
heard these words — "I am not earth-bound 
now; the desire for God has come; the darkness 
has gone; it was your prayers for me which led 
me to pray." 

But further, the fact of being able to help our 
fellow-creatures in the other world is in accord- 
ance with that principle under which we know 
and see the redemptive and uplifting work of 
God to be carried on. No new principle of the 
Divine modus operandi is introduced thereby. 
"God blesses man through man," says the old 
adage, and the essential being of no one is 
changed because of the transference of him from 
the Physical to the Spiritual. God blesses the 
ignorant, the undeveloped and the base in this 
world through their contact with the more en- 

41 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

lightened, the more developed and better ones. 
That is the principle which underlies all mis- 
sionary effort and the work of social reclama- 
tion. Are we prepared to say that God, while 
acting on this principle in regard to saving work 
in this world, disallows it in regard to that 
Spiritual World with which we are so closely 
connected? If the fact of intercourse between 
that world and this be admitted (and the foun- 
dation-truth of the Christian Religion would be 
removed if it be denied) is it not the most rea- 
sonable of all thoughts to suppose that behind 
God's allowance of the intercourse lies His pur- 
pose of blessing man through man? The man 
who is God's instrument of blessing may be in 
this world, and the man to be blessed in the 
Other World; but that seems to us to make no 
difference in the power of the one to help the 
other. 

The consolidarity of the universe remains. 
No part of it is independent of any other part. 
God and His love and His power for uplifting 
are not shut off from any quarter of it. The 
Psalmist was right when he said that if men as- 
cended up into Heaven they could find Him 
there, or made their bed in hell, there also would 
He be. (Ps. cxxxix. 8). This world and the 
other are co-related. Influences for good and 

42 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

evil are streaming in from the Spiritual to the 
Physical, and vice versa. The good and Christ- 
like in spirit-life may project their mind and 
spirit-impulses upon us in earth-life, and at 
times may visibly manifest themselves to us, 
as the glorified departed "fellow servant" did 
to the aged St. John; while the good and noble 
on earth may, by prayer for the departed, by 
the sending forth to them of concernful 
thought, of soul impulses impregnated with the 
quickening power of a Divine love passed from 
God through them — help on to light and re- 
freshment and advancement poor souls who 
have crossed the frontier-line of the Spiritual, 
undeveloped and unsaved. 

I know, perfectly well, what some who read 
these lines will say. I can voice their reply in 
two words — "Danger — Devil!" I have dealt 
with that reply in another chapter of this vol- 
ume. Here, I will only add this : Why do you 
not exclaim the same thing in respect to all 
evangelistic work ? Is there no danger of bane- 
ful influence to those who for the cause of Christ 
and the love of souls suffer themselves to come 
into contact with all sorts of undeveloped ones 
— the revolting savage and the debased dweller 
in the filthy back-slum? Why believe in the 
principle of the bad being raised by their con- 

43 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tact with the good, as it applies to this world, 
and deny it in its application to the other and 
more needful world ? God does not work under 
conflicting sets of principles in different spheres. 

All that has been said above as to the pos- 
sibility of and the reason for this intercourse 
between the earth-world and the Other World, 
will make it easier to answer the question which 
stands at the head of this chapter — "Does not 
the prohibition given to the ancient Israelites 
imply that all intercourse with the Spiritual 
World is contrary to the will of God?" We an- 
swer — "No; it does but imply that, at a partic- 
ular time and under particular circumstances, 
such intercourse was forbidden to certain per- 
sons for special reasons." It does not follow 
that, if God forbid a thing at one time, He for- 
bids it for all time. 

Circumstances may alter the case. Take an 
instance. According to the Mosaic law, the 
Israelites were prohibited from intermarrying 
with foreign races. The regulation was a good 
one, in view of the fact that the Israelites were 
to bear witness to the true principles of re- 
ligious morality; and the foreign races were 
steeped in Polytheism and vice. The prohibi- 
tion was a necessity of the time. But is all 
intermarriage between nations, therefore, to be 

44 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

accounted wrong? Is this law, which was made 
for special circumstances, to debar all persons 
from marrying foreigners? For sufficient and 
good reasons God may even for a while close 
the door of the Spiritual, as when in the time 
of Eli "there was no open vision," or during 
the few centuries preceding the birth of Jesus, 
no exalted spirit seems to have come to men, 
and no earthly teacher received that influx of 
spiritual inspiration which could constitute him 
a prophet. And yet, at the coming of the 
Saviour, the door was opened again, and inter- 
communion between the Spiritual World and 
this marked the earth-life history of the Son of 
Man. 

If the prohibition given to the Israelites de- 
noted that all intercourse with the World of 
Spirit is contrary to the will of God, how very 
strange and inconsistent that angels and de- 
parted men should have so identified themselves 
with God's Christ and His mission on earth! 
Can anything, more than this intermingling of 
the Spiritual and the Physical in the time of 
Jesus, establish the fact that all intercourse with 
the other side is not forbidden by God. 

We have to consider the circumstances which 
rendered that prohibition to the Israelites a 
necessary one. The social and moral condition 

45 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of that race at that time was a very low one. 
The people had been but lately emancipated 
from all the demoralizing influences of Egyptian 
slavery. Their views of God were crude and 
chaotic, and their religious ideas showed the 
constant tendency to become assimilated to the 
ideas which characterized the religion of Egypt, 
and the still baser forms of the religions of those 
nations with whom they came into contact af- 
ter the Exodus. The first Commandment — 
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me" — in- 
dicates the Israelites' proneness to Polytheism; 
while the commands not to kill, not to steal and 
so on, denote that the standard of morality 
among them at that time was of no high type. 
They had been chosen, in the Divine ordering 
of things, to pioneer in the world the cause of 
true religion and righteousness, but as yet men- 
tally, morally and socially they were unde- 
veloped. They were susceptible to every in- 
fluence hostile to a true conception of God, and 
in danger from every contact pertaining to the 
moral undevelopment from which they were 
slowly emerging. 

Both the hostile influence and danger soon 
presented themselves in a special form. In the 
progress of the Israelites to the land in which 
they were to subsequently settle themselves, 

4 6 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

they encountered foes who resisted the invasion 
of their territory. Thousands of these foes 
were slain in the sanguinary encounters which 
ensued. Thousands and thousands of human 
souls, ignorant, morally base, and filled with 
the feelings of hatred and revenge against their 
slayers, were violently hurled by the Israelites 
into spirit-life. Some among the Israelites were 
"mediums;" their psychic powers were so de- 
veloped as to make it possible for the ones in 
spirit-life to re-establish through them com- 
munication with their persecutors. Through 
these open doors came a host of malignant ones, 
thirsting for retaliation, and eager to harm. 
There was but one safeguard for a people, so 
little prepared for the attack of evil and who, 
moreover, had themselves provoked the attack. 
The door must be closed; the communication 
between the Spiritual and the Physical be 
broken in that particular case and under those par- 
ticular circumstances. 

Hence the prohibition. It was given not to 
proscribe all communication between this world 
and the other, but to meet the exigencies of a 
particular case. 

But lastly, those who account this prohibition 
given to the ancient Israelites, as implying that 
all intercourse with the Spiritual World is con- 

47 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

trary to God's will, prove too much. They cut 
away the foundation upon which the Jewish and 
Christian religions rest. Communication be- 
tween this world and the spiritual is the fact 
upon which prophets and Apostles relied for 
their credentials. 

Without such communication, Christianity, 
on its own showing, would possess no evidences 
of its preternatural origin, its spiritual inspira- 
tion or Divine vocation in the world at all. It 
has been accepted by men because of its vital 
relationship to the spiritual. 

The history of the Hebrew race as narrated 
in the Old Testament, is indissolubly bound up 
with the fact of men's contact with the World 
a of Spirit. 

Are we to suppose that the experiences of 
that race in regard to spiritual visitants and 
phenomena, were in opposition to the will or 
command of God? 

There would seem to be an inconsistency in 
God's proscribing intercourse with the Spiritual 
World, and then employing that intercourse as 
the foremost means of teaching men the high- 
est truth. Again, in the New Testament, the 
life and work of Jesus and the Apostles are in- 
separably connected with spiritual intercourse. 
From the birth of the Saviour to His withdrawal 

4 8 



j 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of Himself into the plane of sublimated and as- 
cended life, inter-communion between this world 
and the Spirit World marks the whole track of 
His experience. And so, too, with respect to 
the Apostles and others associated with them. 
Almost every chapter of the Acts contains the 
record of a spiritual sign or wonder, an angelic 
visit, a spiritual vision or a spiritual voice. All 
this is inexplicable and contradictory, if the 
prohibition given under special circumstances, 
against communion with the Spirit World, de- 
notes that the thing itself is forbidden by God. 
The contradiction disappears, if it be realized 
that God's opening of the door of the spiritual 
has been the great means by which He has in- 
structed man in Divine truth; and that His 
reason for commanding certain ones not to 
open that door, was because the great law of 
spiritual attraction must always operate, and 
the danger to those morally and spiritually un- 
developed ones of attracting to them evil in- 
fluences, was greater than any likelihood of 
drawing the good. 



49 



IV. How can it be explained that many of the 
communications alleged to come from discarnate 
beings are unsatisfactory, misleading and un- 
truthful? 

This is a question submitted by one who ad- 
mits the possibility of communication between 
us and beings in spirit-life, but rejects, as being 
wholly subversive of the main-principle of the 
Christian religion, the "Diabolic" theory, viz., 
that all such communication is "the work of the 
Devil." The difficulty confronts him of ac- 
counting for the fact that some of the communi- 
cations received are of the character he has de- 
scribed. The questioner perceives how illogical 
is the position of those who accept the Christian 
religion, and yet regard as incredible all com- 
munication between us and beings in spirit-life. 
He is quite right. What, we ask, could be more 
inconsistent than to profess to implicitly be- 
lieve that after death Moses, Samuel, our Lord, 
the saints who appeared to many in Jerusalem at 
the first Easter-time, and the Christian brother 
who visited St. John at Patmos — that these 

50 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

manifested themselves to, and conversed with, 
the dwellers on earth a few hundred years ago, 
but that since then such an occurrence has 
been an impossibility; nay! that the mere 
thought of it is an absurdity! We argue, if 
such things really did take place in Bible-times 
(and the credibility of the Gospel narratives 
is destroyed, if they did not,) why can they not 
occur in the twentieth century ? What was pos- 
sible then is possible now. God's universe has 
undergone no change of constitution. If there 
be no intermingling of the life of the Spirit 
World with the life of this world at all times, we 
have little or no grounds for believing that 
there ever has been such an intermingling. "As 
it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall 
be." Those Christians who deny the present 
possibility of communion with spirit-beings are 
piously shocked if an Agnostic or a Materialist 
asserts that all the Bible-records of such con- 
tacts are "nonsense." But why be shocked? 
Those persons who take that position cannot 
consistently find fault with the Agnostic. He 
and they both account as incredible the thought 
of communion between the two worlds. He is 
the more consistent. He says the thing itself 
is absurd; it never does, and it never did, hap- 
pen. They say, of course, it happened long ago, 

5i 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

for hundreds and hundreds of years; but it could 
not possibly happen now. Those were Bible 
times, and all was very different then from what 
it has been since. We are told that everything 
the Scriptures state concerning the contact of 
spiritual beings with men is reasonable and 
on no account to be doubted; but that to ac- 
knowledge that anything of a like character 
could take place now is most unreasonable and 
incredible. Now do let us as Christians be logi- 
cal! If communication between us and the 
Spiritual World be an impossibility at the pres- 
ent time, and has been so ever since the times 
of the Bible, then the Agnostic is right; we 
have no grounds for believing that it existed 
as that book declares. Consequently, we must 
reject the Bible accounts of Spiritual Phenom- 
ena as fabrications. On the other hand, if such 
communication is a present-day fact, we have 
an assurance that the principle upon which the 
Christian religion has been based is a trite one. 
The good folk to whom we are alluding say — 
"We believe in the long-ago communication be- 
tween the two worlds, because the Bible asserts 
it zvas so." "Quite so," we reply, "and this 
means that although you, of course, had no ex- 
perience of these happenings, and have no 
means of verifying the statements made con- 

52 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

centring them, you, nevertheless, unquestionably 
believe in them?" 

"Of course, we do," is the rejoinder, "the 
Bible vouches for the facts." Well, those who 
believe in a present-day communication between 
the two worlds have a far stronger case for 
their belief than have the ones who believe that 
such communication existed only in the olden 
times. In the first place, the testimony of the 
Bible in regard to intercourse with the spiritual 
is very small, in comparison with the testimony 
which has been borne to the same thing apart 
from that book. The Bible is a selection of 
writings brought together by a church council 
in A. D. 400, and constituted the Sacred Canon. 
The writings comprise the statements of a small 
body of persons who wrote at different times 
during a period covering many centuries. From 
the time of the closing of the Canon to the 
present moment, hundreds and thousands of 
writers have narrated their experiences of the 
spiritual, as the Bible-writers did; and in a great 
number of instances the experiences of both 
classes of writers are coincident. The testi- 
mony borne by the men of to-day who have 
scientifically studied the phenomena of the 
spiritual, shows how, point by point, the pres- 
ent-day phenomena resemble those which we 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

read in the Bible. Moreover, we have an enor- 
mous amount of testimony from living persons 
who have had their experiences of spiritual 
things, and have never committed those experi- 
ences to writing. We ask, why accept the tes- 
timony of a few men who lived in "the hoary 
past," and account it most reliable, when an 
overwhelmingly greater mass of similar testi- 
mony, given subsequently and also at the pres- 
ent time, is rejected as unreliable and worth- 
less ? We have not one tithe of the evidence for 
the fact that intercourse with the spiritual ex- 
isted in Bible times, that we have for the fact 
that it exists to-day. How absurd for any 
Christian to go to a non-believer and tell him 
that he must accept as absolute truth the state- 
ments of the Bible concerning spiritual hap- 
penings; and in the next breath to inform him 
that all present-day occurrences of the same 
order are nought but the outcome of distorted 
imagination ! 

In the next place, there is, of course, no pos* 
sibility of verifying the statements of the Bible 
writers. We cannot come into contact with the 
ones who had the spiritual experiences. We can 
simply take their word for what they narrate. 
The case for present-day spiritual intercourse 
is in a very much stronger position. There 

54 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

are numbers of persons living among us to-day 
— men distinguished in science and culture — 
whose word we should not dream of doubting, 
men whose experiences of the spiritual have 
been similar to many of those of the Bible writ- 
ers. We can receive from their own lips the 
accounts of what they have experienced. And 
still more than this; it is possible for every open- 
minded enquirer as to the truth of spiritual com- 
munion, to obtain for himself the proof that the 
door between the two worlds is still open. The 
questioner, therefore, as a Christian, is quite 
right in dissenting from those other Christians 
who say that it is a mark of piety to believe 
that spiritual intercourse existed long ago, but 
that it is impious and foolish to think it can 
exist now. 

But what perplexes many who acknowledge 
the fact of present-day intercourse between us 
and spirit-beings, is that the communications 
received are often of an unsatisfactory character. 
These communications do not come up to the 
preconceived idea of what they should be. Many 
have no conception of a spiritual being, except 
as an angel or a devil. It never enters the or- 
dinary religious mind that there are millions in 
the Spirit World who, for a while at least, are 
extraordinarily like the men and women in this 

55 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

world. "How absurd/' say some, "to suppose 
that beings from the other world should come 
to us and talk 'common-places,' or display 
ignorance and mental incapacity, or in some 
cases even tell lies !" But why should it be ab- 
surd to suppose this? We are inclined to think 
that the absurdity lies in expecting that, of 
necessity, all communications from discarnate 
beings must be of a high order and tone. We 
do not suppose that if the repentant robber who 
was crucified with our Lord had appeared af- 
ter death to persons in this world, as others 
mentioned in the Gospel narrative did — that his 
mental tone and conversation would have been 
of the lofty character of that of Moses on the 
Mount of Transfiguration. We believe it would 
have been the tone and conversation of one who 
had but just learned the A B C of higher 
thoughts and better life; and no more. We re- 
gard it also as bordering on the absurd, to sup- 
pose that the ordinary non-cultured and non- 
developed ones who depart this life, and after- 
wards manifest themselves to those left behind, 
should come with no traces of that which had 
previously characterized them. It is not rea- 
sonable. The idea is founded on a false notion 
of what is. The Bible itself and our knowledge 
of the laws of mind and being exclude such a 

56 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

supposition. The established order of things 
would be broken, if it were so; the connection 
between sowing and reaping, between cause and 
effect would be at an end. 

Now, a very common notion concerning the 
Other World is, that in passing into it we un- 
dergo at once a complete change of mind, char- 
acter and disposition. The one who in this life 
may have been very silly, very ignorant, or very 
morally and spiritually imperfect, is pictured as 
becoming soberminded, wise and virtuous, as 
soon as ever he crosses the threshold of spirit- 
life. All frivolity and light-mindedness will in- 
stantaneously disappear, it is said, in that world 
where all is intense reality; all ignorance will 
cease in a light which reveals everything; and 
moral imperfection — well, that, too, will disap- 
pear with the physical body. 

Of course, those who hold this view of the 
tremendous transforming power of death on our 
being, regard this sudden acquirement of men- 
tal and moral excellence as only accruing to 
those who die in the condition of "saved souls." 
Death, they suppose, works a transformation in 
the case of the other class; but it is a transfor- 
mation into a condition which is hopelessly and 
irretrievably bad. For the "unsaved" ignorant 
and sinful ones, death gives the stereotyping 

57 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

touch for an endless Satanic life. It is an awful 
thought! a thought which makes one shudder; 
but it is an idea which hundreds of thousands 
of sincere men have attached to the religion of 
Jesus, and labelled "Orthodoxy." Yes, and it 
is the thought which has caused many who ac- 
knowledge the fact of spirit-return, to account 
as a marauding force of the Devil those poor, 
earth-bound spirits who sometimes come to us, 
with all the disfigurement of a neglected past 
upon them; the ones who, although they have 
moved off the stage of the temporal, are less 
wise, less good, and less spiritually-developed 
than we are. Some of the truth-obscuring tra- 
ditions of the past must be unlearned. Death is 
no transformer of the inner being of any one; 
nor does change of environment suddenly make 
a person excellently good or hopelessly evil. 
Death strips from off a man that physical ve- 
hicle through which for a while he expressed 
himself; but it does not alter him. It transfers 
him to another plane of life; but it effects no 
change in the bent of his will, the tone of his 
character and the nature of his desires. He 
commences his new phase of experience in the 
Spirit World at precisely the mental and moral 
point he had touched when he left the earth- 
life. If in this world he was silly or ignorant, 

58 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

or vicious, or unspiritual, he will be so in the 
Other World; until the disciplining love of God 
shall have worked its results, and the soul, pre- 
viously unborn to the Divine, shall feel the thrill 
of quickening life, and shall set itself with the 
tide of spiritual being which makes for the up- 
ward and for God. Yes, and the consequences 
of the past may be such, that only slowly and 
with difficulty can the mind be brought to hate 
the alienation, the shame and the swine, and to 
say — "I will arise, and go to my Father." The 
believer in the Bible should have no difficulty 
in realizing that death will not change the mind, 
the character and the disposition. The Samuel 
who appeared after death was the same in 
thought and feeling as he had been before he 
entered spirit-life. His words spoken as a dis- 
carnate one were but the echo of what he had 
said when in the flesh. Departed Moses, too, 
in his converse with Jesus, at that rendezvous 
where beings in earth-life and spirit-life met, 
showed by the subject on which he spoke, that 
his discarnate mind was in the same groove as 
his incarnate mind had been long before. The 
Saviour, too, in those manifestations of Him- 
self after He had passed out of the earth-life, 
showed by the words He spoke to men and 
women who were privileged to see Him, that 

59 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

none of the characteristics of His beautiful mind 
and spirit had undergone change or modifica- 
tion. The first Easter greeting — "Mary!" de- 
noted that the bond of friendship and affection 
had not been broken. His words — "All hail!" 
"Peace be unto you," "I ascend to my Father 
and your Father;" His exposition of truth as 
He walked unrecognized with those two men 
on the road to Emmaus; His special appearance 
to St. Peter; His significant thrice-repeated 
question — "Lovest thou me?" and His re- 
iterated charge to that same Apostle — "Feed 
my lambs" — "Feed my sheep" — all showed that 
entrance into spirit-life had not altered the Jesus 
Himself. The old love, the old longing to 
lighten burdened hearts, the old desire to im- 
part peace, the old passion to make men realize 
that God is their Father, the remembrance 
of what had happened, and the principle which 
had dominated the whole of His earth-life, con- 
cern for others — all this remained unchanged 
in Jesus after death. 

Many years after this glorious Easter-tide 
of close intercourse between the two worlds, 
a faithful servant of the Master wrote that 
he had "a desire to depart and to be with 
Christ." This statement of St. Paul has been 
taken by some to denote that death will usher 

60 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

all believing souls into an immediately-acquired 
condition of perfection. "Prayers for the Faith- 
ful Departed," say some, "are wholly unneces- 
sary: they have reached the goal; they go to be 
zvith Christ; St. Paul said so." Well, we do not 
believe that non-developed Christians — the ones 
who are selfish, petty, bad-tempered and lack 
the sweetness of love — go at death to "be with 
Christ," in the sense in which the Apostle meant 
the words. St. Paul was of a very different class 
from such. But suppose they do ! The robber 
who died on the cross went that very day to be 
with Jesus in Paradise; but does that involve 
that that man, with his neglected and perverted 
past, in a few moments or a few hours acquired 
perfection of mind and character? That St. 
Paul and other developed souls should go at 
death to be with our Lord is only the corollary 
of their previous life. It is only in accord with 
the Divine law that one reaps as he sows. It 
implies no transformation of being in the act 
of dying. Mentally, morally and spiritually, 
such blessed ones at death become no more 
than they were. The changed environment 
does but afford them enhanced possibilities of 
adding glory on glory to their moral being, as 
their fuller life rolls on. St. Paul's expectation 
of being with Christ as soon as he should leave 

61 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

this life, was based on the fact that for him "to 
live (here) was Christ." In a word, then, the 
Bible teaches that no moral miracle is worked 
by death, but that men and women on entering 
spirit-life are what they were on leaving earth- 
life. Now, if this truth expressed above be real- 
ized, there will be no difficulty in understand- 
ing why some of the communications received 
from the other side are unsatisfactory, mislead- 
ing and even lying. Many attach to the utter- 
ance of a spiritual being an importance and au- 
thority which they would not dream of attach- 
ing to the utterance of any earthly speaker. But 
why? Do they not know that the world of 
spirit holds men and women whose mental and 
moral conditions are just as varied as are the 
conditions of men and women here? There are 
to be found good, bad and indifferent ones, 
some enlightened, others but partially so, and 
many, as yet, ignorant of Divine truth, and irre- 
sponsive to the vibrations of goodness. There 
are to be found those to whom cling the 
thoughts, instincts and tendencies which have 
been persistent in the earth-life. The physical 
body has been laid aside, but the character has 
been retained. The ones who have been de- 
based, deceitful and untruthful on earth, possess 
the same pre-disposition and potentiality, until 

62 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the judgments of God shall have awakened 
them to better things. The closing words of 
the Canon of Scripture are no declaration of a 
vindictive God; but a statement of what must be 
under the inviolable law of cause and effect — 
"He that is unrighteous, let him do unright- 
eousness still; and he that is filthy, let him be 
made filthy still; and he that is righteous, let 
him do righteousness still." (Rev. xxii. n Re- 
vised Version). 

In the face of this truth, how foolish to treat 
any statement as authoritative and true, simply 
and solely because it comes to us from the 
Other World. And yet there are many who do 
so. If a communicating spirit should declare 
that the great verities of the Christian religion 
are not to be believed, that, in itself, is quite 
sufficient in the case of some to cause those 
verities to be discredited. But that is a very 
illogical position to assume. The communicator 
may be an ignorant one, a deceiver, or a liar. 
In this world we come into contact with such 
persons, but we do not dream of accepting as 
truth all that they tell us, simply on the grounds 
of its being their ipse dixit. No, we exercise 
our judgment, and estimate the worth of any 
statement made, by giving due weight to the 
fact that our informant may be ignorant, mis- 

6 3 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

led, or untruthful in regard to the matter about 
which he speaks. In just such a sensible way 
should we treat all communications which come 
to us from the Other Side. They may be true 
or they may be false. There are ignorant ones 
there; those who have carried their old habits 
and predispositions with them into spirit-life, 
and who still try to deceive, to lie and to mis- 
lead. Earth-bound, and not in tune with the 
higher life of the spiritual, they find avenues 
open to them whereby they can re-establish 
their connection with the Physical. Are we 
to believe and to account as authoritative all 
they may tell us? Not if we be wise; not if we 
obey the injunction of that Apostle who had 
a personal experience of the Spirit World, be- 
fore he had severed his connection with the 
Physical World. (See II Cor. xii. i to 4). 
He bade us beware of "seducing spirits" We 
must listen to the counsel of one — another 
Apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ; the man who 
saw and heard Jesus, Moses and a Christian 
fellow-labourer after their departure from this 
world. "Beloved," wrote he, "believe not every 
spirit, but test (So/a/^afeTe) the spirits whether 

they are of God Every spirit that con- 

fesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is 
of God; and every spirit that confesseth not 

64 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of 
God." (I John iv. 1-3). 

Are we to suppose, if a spirit came to us 
and told us that God had commissioned him to 
be "a lying spirit in the mouth of all his 
prophets," in order to compass the physical de- 
struction of a wicked man, that that spirit was 
speaking the truth? We should know at once 
that he was a deceiver and a liar; because for 
God to forbid lying and then to sanction and en- 
join it, would be on the part of God a breach 
of the law of righteousness. A personal friend 
of mine, who is clairvoyant and clairaudient and 
possesses great psychic power, and who is, 
moreover, a Christian and highly cultured, has 
received many audible and written communica- 
tions from spirit-beings, of a high order, in the 
same way as the seers of old did. That person 
was one day much distressed and perplexed at 
being told by a spiritual communicator that he 
(the spirit) had had no reason to alter or modify 
the views he had held in earth-life, viz., that 
the Christian religion was not true. It seemed 
so incredible to my friend that a being in spirit- 
life should be ignorant of a matter which, if 
true, is of such vital importance to himself and 
others. "Surely," said he, "the statement of 
that spirit suggests the thought that the belief 

65 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

we hold may not be right !" Our answer is, that 
such a statement points to no conclusion of the 
Christian religion being untrue; but only to the 
fact that one in spirit-life was still unenlightened 
in regard to higher truth; that the consequences 
of indifference, prejudice, ignorance and irreli- 
gion in this world, had blinded a poor soul 
in the beyond to the light of God as it is mani- 
fested in the Jesus who here and there reveals 
it. "A misleading spirit!" say some. "Yes," 
we reply, "if we who know the fuller truth let 
him mislead us. But not so, if we measure him 
by the Christ." The authority of the Jesus of 
earth-life, or the Jesus of anastasis-life, will be 
greater to us than the authority of any spirit 
who may come to us from Behind the Veil. We 
do not, in this world, surrender our faith, and 
alter our convictions of truth, at the bidding of 
an unenlightened and non-developed "casual" 
who may cross our path. "A devil — that one !" 
say others. "No;" we again reply, "only a poor 
soul living in 'the darkness without;' reaping 
the consequences of past neglect and wilfulness; 
not yet awakened to truth; not yet drawn to 
the Christ. Curse him not, though you count 
him an enemy. The cursing age for those who 
believe in the Great Lover of human souls is 
fast passing away. Discourage his visits to you, 

66 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

if you be not strong enough to help him to God 
and light, or be weak enough for his ignorance 
to imperil your faith in Christian truth; but pray 
for him, tell him to pray; and tell him, too, that 
other spirits, wiser than he, grander and more 
developed than he, have come to some of us 
dwellers on earth from God's spheres of higher 
and highest spiritual-life, to help us and uplift 
us; to tell us that the unattuned and un-Christ- 
like soul cannot know the greatest truths of 
God, and that only as the soul of man is per- 
meated with love, and is brought thereby into 
union with the Christ who is the embodiment 
of Divine Love, can it know the all of Truth, 
and reach the destined end of being. 



6y 



V. Is there a danger in attending Seances on 
the ground that at such meetings evil and deceiv- 
ing spirits may be attracted? 

There is; and we have to consider more par- 
ticularly the character of that danger and the 
conditions out of which it arises. The possibil- 
ity of evil and deceiving spirits coming into 
communcation with persons living in the earth- 
life has been discussed in the foregoing article. 
It has been pointed out that the mental and 
moral condition of persons in the Spirit World 
cannot be defined by the two terms — "good" 
and "bad." Between these two extremes there 
lie every conceivable type of mind and charac- 
ter. There are numbers of spirit-men and 
women, who may rightly be described as evil; 
though not in the sense of the popular idea that 
they are non-human beings; a malignant race 
distinct from humanity, and known as demons. 
They are evil in the same sense as those persons 
in this world are spoken of as evil, not when 
they are irretrievably bad, with no point what- 
ever of goodness within them; but when in 

68 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

character and life they are more attuned to 
what is wicked than to what is good. We de- 
scribe as evil the immoral, drunken and de- 
based person, the one of low tastes and habits, 
the scoffer at religion and virtue, and the one 
who finds a delight in lying, deceiving, and phy- 
sically or mentally harming others. Not all of 
good has been extinguished in such ones, but 
the evil is predominant. There are beings in 
the Spirit World of this description who some- 
times come to us. They are not devils; they 
are discarnate human beings who are unde- 
veloped, unenlightened, and sufficiently morally 
bad to justify us in calling them "evil" spirits. 
We do not believe that they will everlastingly 
remain as such; we think they will advance. 
They are earth-bound in their ideas, their tastes 
and their seekings. They left the earth-life un- 
fitted for the spirit-life, and their instincts and 
longings gravitate towards the former rather 
than towards the latter. It is only in harmony 
with the better theological thought of the pres- 
ent day, and with the recorded utterance of the 
Saviour as to "seeking and saving the lost/' to 
think that the judgments of God will cause 
them to rise from this condition. Nay, further, 
we will venture to say that the reason why such 
evilly-conditioned ones as these are at times 

69 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

permitted to renew their relationship with the 
Physical, is that they, by the very experiences 
they obtain through such renewal, may realize 
the futility of remaining earth-bound, and have 
enkindled in them the desire for better life. 

A person who possessed in a very high degree 
the gift of clairvoyance, once told me that 
often as he passed the open door of gin-palaces 
in London and elsewhere, he could see spiritual 
beings intermingling with the hr.lf-drunken 
men and women who were thronging the drink- 
ing bars. Why were those spirits permitted to 
be there? it may be asked. We may account 
for it in two ways. First, the great law of affin- 
ity — the law which attracts like to like — was 
operating in regard to them. By their habits 
and mode of living while on earth, those spirits 
had moulded for themselves a certain character, 
and had so identified themselves with base 
things, as to make the taste and craving for 
those things the controlling power of their 
mind and the determining principle of their ac- 
tions. While in the flesh, they had been drunk- 
ards and companions of the lewd and depraved. 
After death, they found themselves unchanged, 
except that the physical body, through which 
the perverted mind and will had expressed 
themselves, was gone. Earth-bound, and with, 

70 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

as yet, no desire for, or possibility of attaining, 
higher thoughts and higher experiences, they 
were drawn by an impulse, which they had no 
power or wish to resist, viz., to re-visit the 
haunts and associates connected with their past 
life of vice. As discarnate ones, they them- 
selves are no longer able to indulge in the in- 
toxication or the grossnesses and vices of the 
physical; but a certain satisfaction is derived 
from mingling with and inciting others who can 
still do so. After death they have gone, as it 
was said of Judas, "to their own place." The 
evil of two worlds meet in such a scene as we 
have just described. The other way in which 
we may account for discarnate ones being al- 
lowed to re-associate themselves with evil phy- 
sical surroundings, is as has already been sug- 
gested. It may be one of the means, one of the 
judgments of a Father-God, whereby his de- 
based creatures may learn the folly, the futility 
and the horror of persisting in a course marked 
by the perversion of the mind and spirit. It 
may be one of His methods of bringing those 
wretched ones to see that no satisfaction, no 
sense of hope and restfulness can come to any 
soul until the thoughts have been averted from 
the evil and turned towards good. That beauti- 
ful parable told by Jesus justifies this thought. 

71 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Those very experiences of the Prodigal which 
connected him with what was base, degraded 
and shameful, brought him at length to the 
point of wishing for better things, and of aris- 
ing and going to his father. Now, we have 
dwelt upon the fact of this law of being — this 
principle which operates, we believe, through- 
out the whole universe — viz., that "like attracts 
like," because it is inseparably connected with 
all that may take place in regard to Seances. 
What is a Seance ? It is a sitting on the part of 
persons for the purpose of obtaining communi- 
cation from spirit-beings. What class of com- 
municators will be attracted thereby? it is natur- 
ally asked. "Devils, only devils," reply some, 
whose theology is characterized by a super- 
abundance of the Satanic element. "That is 
wrong, of course," rejoins the questioner, "but 
will not such meetings attract evil and deceiving 
spirits?" We answer that that will depend en- 
tirely on the tone of mind and the character 
of the sitters. "Like attracts like." At one 
Seance there may be drawn evil and deceiving 
spirits; at another, good and enlightening ones; 
at a third, mediocre beings who are neither 
very wise and good, nor very ignorant and 
bad; while at some Seances the good and indif- 

72 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ferent from the Other Side may both alike make 
the effort to express themselves. 

If the circle be composed of those who are 
frivolous, spiritually undeveloped and ignorant 
of higher truth, the spirits who will feel the at- 
tractive force, and will respond to it, if the door 
of communication be open for them, will be 
similar in mind to those who invite them. To 
look for communications of an exalted nature 
from such, is as absurd as it would be for a com- 
pany of ignoramuses to invite another igno- 
ramus into their circle, and expect the latter to 
enlighten them on subjects concerning which 
he knows nothing. If the circle comprise those 
whose moral tone is low, and whose ideas and 
tastes are essentially of "the earth, earthy," the 
spirits who avail themselves of their mediumship 
will be of the same type as they are. It causes 
astonishment sometimes, that spirits who come 
to a circle composed of irreligious, worldly- 
minded individuals, should say nothing but the 
barest commonplaces, and nought that has the 
stamp of spiritual knowledge and culture. "How 
incredible," says someone, "that a being from 
the Other Life should talk in that zvay!" "How 
incredible," we rejoin, "seeing his condition, 
that he could talk in any other way!" "Like 
attracts like." If you are able to diagnose the 

73 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

character and disposition of those who draw 
him to their midst, you will be able pretty ac- 
curately to diagnose his character and disposi- 
tion. Again, if the circle be made up wholly of 
those whose minds and lives are in tune with 
spiritual things, and who approach the subject 
reverently and prayerfully, the law of attraction 
will draw from the Other Side only those spirits 
whose minds are responsive to the minds of the 
sitters. They will be able to impart to us, not 
full knowledge of higher truths, but much which 
is in advance of our own knowledge. It will 
be in their power to guide, to cheer, to bless 
and to stimulate us in our efforts to grasp God 
and goodness. I have been present at many 
Seances of this description — held in the house 
of a friend, who has himself now passed Beyond 
the Veil. Those present were all devout and 
prayerful persons, and the meetings were al- 
ways opened with earnest prayer that light and 
blessing might be vouchsafed, and that no un- 
desirable or evil influence might be allowed to 
intrude. And what was the outcome ? At those 
meetings I have seen the manifestations of 
spiritual presences, and heard from my friend in 
trance-condition (in which state I believe his 
mind to have been controlled by a mind outside 
himself) such thoughts and ideas and magnifi- 

74 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cent conceptions of life, as he, unaided, was 
unable either to think or express. 

Again, at a Seance the sitters may exhibit 
dissimilarity in regard to mind and character. 
Some may be attuned to the drawing to the 
circle of good and developed spirits, while 
some may be an attracting power on non-de- 
veloped and even evil spirits. What then ? The 
result will be unsatisfactory. Confusion will 
arise. The presence of the spiritually-minded 
sitter or sitters in the circle may draw the de- 
veloped spirit-visitant; but it will be difficult for 
him to express himself. The conditions will be 
unfavorable to his doing so. Another influ- 
ence will be working against him. If, as re- 
gards the sitters, the predominating influence 
be on the side of the unspiritual, then the 
chances are that the Seance will be controlled 
by the lower class of communicators. The good 
control will have suffered a repulse. We have 
been asked, again and again, "Do you recom- 
mend that anyone should attend Seances ?" We 
answer, "Yes, if the circle be composed of good, 
spiritually-minded, prayerful persons — those 
who hold God in their life and are seeking for 
truth. Their combined influence will constitute 
an attractive force, and supply the conditions 
whereby the good in the world of spirit may 

75 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

be brought into uplifting and helpful communi- 
cation with us. But no; certainly not, if the 
circle be that of the unspiritual ones. In doing 
so, you will be but helping to open the door 
to the ones you do not want, and saying to the 
tramps and undesirables of the Spiritual World 
— 'Come in and make yourselves at home.' : 

And lastly, if you possess, as Jesus and the 
early Christians did, the psychic power of "dis- 
cerning spirits" (I Cor. xii. 10), and by chance 
(or rather let us say by God's ordering) you 
meet a poor unrestful spirit, whom you invited 
not, but who has crossed your path because the 
chain of the past is holding him down to the 
earth-plane — Oh ! be like the Christ of Love and 
Pity; help him by letting him know that your 
prayer has gone up, the prayer that the light 
of the Holy Spirit of God may break in upon 
the darkness of an alienated mind, and that he 
may see, as God's beckoners to him, the Har- 
bor-lights of higher spheres. 



7 6 



VI. Will the relationships which have existed 
between persons in this world be maintained in 
the Life Beyond? 

That, in our opinion, will absolutely depend 
upon whether there existed, as the basis of the 
earthly relationship, the principle of spiritual 
attraction, or affinity. There can be no union 
between soul and soul, in the World of Spirit, 
apart from this. Dissociated from the Physical 
and from all the considerations of the Physical, 
the only bond of connection between spirit and 
spirit must be spiritual. 

Now, many of the relationships connected 
with the earth-life are not founded on this spirit- 
ual basis. They spring from the Physical, and 
never rise beyond it. In this world, persons 
are often so connected with one another, that 
the spirit-self of the individuals comes but little, 
or not at all, into the relationship. 

Take some of the instances which are pre- 
sented in regard to the marriage tie. Two per- 
sons, we will suppose, from a consideration 
merely of money, or social position, or expedi- 
ency, or fleeting fancy, enter into the relation- 

77 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ship of man and wife. The essential part of 
them — their spirit, with all its powers of love 
and sympathy — may but little, perhaps not at 
all, be called into play in the transaction. In 
regard to them, there may be no conjunction 
of spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and heart 
with heart. The man married the woman only 
because he wanted a wife, and she was socially 
and physically eligible. The woman married 
the man because her position and status in the 
world would be advanced thereby. Such a re- 
lationship, we believe, will not be perpetuated 
in the Life Beyond. Those two persons, there, 
will not stand in the relationship of wedded 
beings. Death, which launches us into a world 
where spiritual activities are everything, will 
remove from them the causes out of which their 
earthly relationship arose; and devoid of the 
spiritual basis of union, each will be no more to 
the other than any other spirit might be. It was 
due to the Sadducees' failure to perceive that 
the only lasting bond of union must be a spiritual 
one, that prompted them to ask our Lord, "In 
the Anastasis, whose wife shall she be of the 
seven? For they all had her." (Matt. xxii. 28). 
Christ's reply to them was no declaration that 
the relationship embodied in marriage, if based 
on the spiritual union of two beings, would not 

78 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

be perpetuated in the World of Spirit. He did 
but enunciate the principle, that no earthly mar- 
riage, contracted merely from considerations of 
the mundane (in the case in point, to raise up 
seed to a deceased brother) could possibly, in 
the Life Beyond, constitute the bond between 
spirit and spirit. "In the Anastasis," said Jesus, 
"they are as the angels of God in Heaven," i. e., 
they are spiritual beings; they live in the envi- 
ronment of the spiritual. "They neither marry, 
nor are given in marriage. " The Physical will 
be superseded; no merely physical tie which 
linked two persons on earth will constitute their 
bond of union hereafter. Soul must be wedded 
to soul, or the earthly relationship will be 
broken by the disrupting hand of death. Spirit 
in tune with spirit is the only basis of relation- 
ship Beyond the Veil. 

It may be asked — Will, then, the marriage 
tie be dissolved at death? Will those who have 
been connected in this life, stand disconnected 
and unrelated to each other hereafter? We 
think, not; if the earthly relationship was the 
outcome of, or has led to the development of, a 
spiritual affinity. The relationship which has 
maintained mutual love and sympathy and has 
caused the spiritual force of the one being to 
energize towards the other, will not cease to 

79 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

exist with dissociation from the Physical. If 
that relationship be founded on the spiritual 
within us, its continuance is assured; because 
our spirit-self and its energies and powers are 
not impaired by physical dissolution. 

The husband and wife, whose souls have been 
in tune in the earth-life, will not, we believe, be 
unrelated in the life to come. The spiritual in- 
teraction set up will not stop at the incident of 
death. Conjoined on earth, by an indestructible 
principle, they will gravitate to each other in 
the world of Spirit. The Physical and the con- 
siderations of the Physical will have disap- 
peared, but the spiritual union will remain in- 
tact. In that life the relationship created in 
the earth-life will become intensified and con- 
summated. Those spiritually united souls will 
still be the nearest and dearest to each other. 
Like the Master, who loved all, but specially 
loved St. John and the family at Bethany, each 
of those two spiritually married souls will be 
more closely allied to the other, than either can 
be to any other spirit. In the light of such a 
thought, how significant and beautiful becomes 
the earthly relationship of marriage to mutually 
loving ones! "Till death us do part," says the 
Prayer-Book. Nay — "Till our death enhance 
and spiritually consummate the bond forever." 

80 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Take the case of a man or a woman who may 
have been twice or thrice married. Will all 
those persons who were the earthly partners of 
one having had such an experience, stand in the 
relationship of husbands, or wives, to that one, 
in the Hereafter? We think not for the reason 
that it is only the highest degree of spiritual 
affinity that can constitute spiritual marriage, 
and that, we believe, can only exist between a 
soul and one other soul. 

The reason, we take it, why Christianity, as 
God's higher revealment of truth, discounte- 
nances Polygamy, is that earthly marriage was 
intended to prefigure spiritual marriage. A de- 
veloped soul will love and must love other 
souls; aye, all souls; but there can be but one 
soul between whom and itself the closest affinity 
and union exists. The man and woman who 
have stood to each other in the earthly relation- 
ship of husband and wife, will, if there has been 
a real soul-union, stand in the same relation- 
ship in spirit-life. 

Those whom God hath thus spiritually joined 
together will not be put asunder because the 
physical conditions of their union are removed. 
But it will not be so, apart from this union of 
soul. Without this intermingling of spirit with 
spirit, this spiritual attracting force exerted by 

81 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the one on the other, these two persons may 
stand altogether unrelated in the Life Beyond. 
The contact there may be no more than the 
contact which each may have with souls not 
known during earth-life. In a world of spiritual 
reality, the wedded couple of earth, unlinked in 
spirit, may find themselves in divergent spheres 
of life and interest. Apply this to the case of 
the one who may have had several wedded part- 
ners. In the World of Spirit, whose wife will 
the woman be who on earth had two or three 
husbands? Whose husband will the man be 
who had two or three wives? The question af- 
fects a large section of mankind — the polygam- 
ist, and the man who has married more than 
once. 

"They neither marry, nor are given in mar- 
riage," said the Christ. The earthly sense of 
marriage will have been obliterated; the Phy- 
sical concomitants of union between being and 
being will have disappeared; but the connection 
of soul with soul will remain. Every spirit, we 
believe, will be short of full development, and 
will not have fulfilled the design of its being, 
until it has found, and has been united to, that 
one other spirit; its spiritual mate, its comple- 
ment, its alter ego. And they twain become one. 

Did there exist between the man and one of 

82 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the women to whom he was wedded on earth 
that spiritual affinity, that mutual attraction of 
ego to ego, that union of essential being? If 
so, the relationship will not be dissolved by- 
death. In the Beyond, they will be spiritually 
wedded souls. The bond between them, al- 
though in the past associated with the Physical, 
was not dependent upon it. It had its roots in 
the spiritual and it must remain. The spirit-man 
may still love those other souls who in earth- 
life stood in the relationship of wife to him, 
but his love for them will be different from 
the love he will hold for the one between whom 
and himself there subsisted this soul-union. The 
latter will be his spirit partner. The earthly 
marriages, unbased on any union of souls, will 
have been annulled by death; while the rela- 
tionship which was rooted in the spiritual will 
be continued. That soul-linked husband and 
wife of earth, will be the spiritual husband and 
wife of the Beyond. 

And what has been stated above in regard 
to the relationship of marriage, appears to us 
to apply to all other earthly relationships. It 
may be asked — Will a father and mother, when 
they have passed into spirit-life, stand in that 
relationship to the ones who in earth-life were 
their children? Will the relationship of brother 

83 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

and sister and other family connections be 
maintained hereafter? Will not all ties of con- 
sanguinity disappear in an environment in which 
everything pertains to the Spiritual, and nothing 
to the Physical ? We reply, it will depend upon 
whether the earthly relationship did, or did not, 
bring about soul relationship and affinity. 

The mother, for instance, whose soul goes 
out to the undeveloped soul of the little child 
who is subsequently snatched from her by death, 
will certainly, we think, stand in relationship as 
mother to that child in spirit-life. But, it may 
be urged, there could be, in such a case, no 
affinity between the soul of the mother and the 
soul of the child. The child died with its soul 
undeveloped; there could be no response on 
the part of the child's soul to the soul of the 
mother. Quite so, for a while at least. But the 
soul-vibrations of love from the mother on earth 
can reach and affect the developing soul of the 
child Behind the Veil. Those vibrations, pro- 
jected into an atmosphere pulsating with love, 
will produce love. The spirit-child will feel that 
love. Its soul will respond to it. As it spirit- 
ually advances, there will be inborne upon its 
consciousness the fact that the soul-force of 
an unknown mother is enwrapping it. 

A longing for that mother will arise; an ex- 

8 4 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

pectation of union with her; a praying that 
this may be gratified. We can picture the 
rest — can we not? A ministering-spirit lead- 
ing a child-spirit towards a newly-emancipated 
woman-spirit. No word of explanation, no in- 
troduction! A look, a thrill, on the part of 
woman and child. Their souls have recognized 
each other. The relationship of earth has not 
been broken; the mother and child are reunited 
as such. The other earthly ties of relationship 
also, which make a person a brother, a sister, a 
lover, a friend, will not, we think, be obliterated 
in the Higher-life. If between that one and the 
other to whom he or she stands related there 
exists the touch of soul with soul, the tie will 
be maintained. The earthly relationships, which 
in time have ennobled and sanctified human lives 
and drawn spirit to spirit, are not designed to 
play no part in the experiences of eternity. In 
the World of Spirit, the maintained and spirit- 
ually accentuated ties which knit husband and 
wife, lover and lover, parent and child, and 
friend and friend, will be found to be the Di- 
vinely appointed means by which the mighty 
principle of love will the better energize in the 
human soul, attuning it for its highest and clos- 
est communion with the Father of Love. 

It may seem a daring statement to make, but 

85 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

we believe that many a husband and father, 
many a wife and mother, whose relationship 
with partner or children has drawn forth and 
combined the forces and sweetness of souls, will 
hereafter stand higher in the attainments of 
love and better adapted for God's Heaven, than 
many a canonized saint who in cell or cloister 
has divorced himself from the relationships of 
life. Love in a human soul will develop into 
self-love, apart from the reciprocal touch of 
other souls. And the relationships of earth, we 
believe, which effect this reciprocal touch, are 
Divinely appointed to remain. 

Will there, then, be some in the After-Life 
whose earthly relationships with others may 
cease to exist? 

Yes, alas ! we think so. There are, for exam- 
ple, unfatherly fathers and unmotherly mothers, 
in regard to whom the only tie subsisting be- 
tween them and their children is a physical one. 
They begat them: nothing more. No spiritual 
bond links them and their offspring. Death, we 
think, will snap, once and forever, that merely 
physical connection. There will remain noth- 
ing, in the Beyond, which can constitute a link- 
ing of the spirit-self of the parent and the spirit- 
self of the child. The work of the Church of 
England Waifs and Strays Society and Dr. Bar- 

86 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

nado's Homes reveals the fact that there are 
such fathers and mothers. 

Now, whatever may be the possibilities of re- 
pentance, amendment and development here- 
after, in the case of such parents, they will not 
evade the inviolable law of God, that "whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
(Gal. vi. 7). Earthly parents who have never 
realized, nor sought to cultivate the spiritual 
bond between them and their children will reap 
the consequences. In the Spirit World they 
will be short of an experience and a joy which 
they might have had. An earthly relationship 
might have blossomed into a heavenly relation- 
ship. But it did not do so. Hereafter, the 
thrill and delight of spiritualized fatherhood and 
motherhood will be an impossibility to them. 
The mercy of God may cause them to develop, 
at length, into blessed souls; but for eternity 
they may be short of what they might have 
been, had the earthly relationship been sanctified 
for the development of the spirit. They may 
experience an "everlasting damnation" which 
means an everlasting loss. Forever, they may 
be spiritually less developed than they might 
have been : a department of their being may re- 
main unopened. They may see the spirit-chil- 
dren of others clasped in the arms of their spirit- 

87 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

parents; but no spirit-child is held in their em- 
brace. The son or daughter, born to them on 
earth, may meet them and be known to them; 
but that one may be no more to them than any 
other stranger-spirit. The sense of relationship, 
unbased upon the spiritual, will have gone. 

On the other hand, a beautiful and comfort- 
ing thought suggests itself It is this: that 
many a soul, in the Life Beyond, may not, until 
then, realize the full possibilities of higher be- 
ing, in finding the satisfaction of the yearnings 
of the spiritual nature, and the answer to the 
intuitions and aspirations of love. There are 
persons, capable of so loving another, that an 
earthly marriage relationship could only be to 
them the starting point of an indissoluble spirit- 
ual union in life hereafter. 

But how many persons are there who never 
meet in this world, the one between whom and 
themselves there is this touch of soul with soul. 
If, by chance, they meet that one, there may 
have been all sorts of worldly considerations 
why their lives did not become conjoined. 
What of them? What of the gentle, loving, 
Christ-like woman, who longed for, but never 
knew, a true man's love? What of the good 
man, a department of whose soul remained 
undeveloped, because no woman-soul loved 

88 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

him above all others ? Will such persons never 
know the joy of loving one particular soul and of 
being loved by that soul, in a way which tran- 
scends all other possibilities of love? In the 
World Beyond will no true spiritual mate com- 
plete the being of such a man or woman? We 
believe that such persons, capable of so spirit- 
ually loving, although denied in this world the 
fulfillment of their spirit's longings, will meet in 
the Hereafter their kindred spirit. Somewhere, 
in the great universe of spirit, there is, we think, 
the alter ego, the complemental soul, for each 
loving, though mateless, one of earth. 

Only will the purpose of God have been ful- 
filled, we believe, when "they twain shall have 
become one;" when these alter egos, drawn to 
each other by the irresistible force of spiritual 
attraction, shall have met, and combined in the 
highest relationship of spiritually-wedded souls. 

Again, there are many women who, while 
possessing all the capacities for true mother- 
hood, have never become mothers. A keen dis- 
appointment is felt by them; a craving of their 
spirit has not been answered; great resources of 
their nature have not been drawn upon; no be- 
ing has stood to them in the relationship of 
child. 

In the Life of Spirit will there be no possi- 

89 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

bility of satisfying the spiritual instincts and as- 
pirations of such persons? Will the thrill and 
joy which arises from the fact of being viewed 
as mother, by one or more, be never granted to 
the potentially maternal souls who have passed 
out of earth-life childless? 

We hold the conviction that in the accom- 
plishment of the All-Father's purpose of Love, 
the satisfying of this true spiritual instinct will 
be vouchsafed to such. There are millions of 
little child-souls who pass into spirit-life, unfol- 
lowed by the love and prayers of any earthly 
mother. What if those little ones should be as- 
signed to the care and become the spiritual chil- 
dren of those women-souls who have never on 
earth, in spite of their longing, been a mother 
to any ! Can we suppose that a Divine instinct, 
implanted in every true woman-spirit, though 
ungratified as far as this life is concerned, is 
destined to lead to nothing — to die out from 
lack of opportunity to express itself? Nay; we 
have different ideas of God's love and purposes. 
He never mocks His creatures by endowing 
them with noble instincts and longings for 
which no satisfyings have been provided. No 
woman possessing the spiritual capability of 
motherhood, will, we think, ever reach the pos- 
sibilities of her being, until some child-spirit re- 

90 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

gards her as spiritual mother. May it not be 
that, in this way, untold numbers of God's little 
ones, unblessed by a true mother's love while 
in earth-life, may in spirit-life be encircled by 
the arms of these spirit-mothers, and in the en- 
foldments of their love may move on to the de- 
velopment and perfecting of being? Such ideas 
may not be compatible with the notions which 
have prevailed as to the Life Beyond; but they 
are compatible with our growing ideas and ex- 
tended knowledge of the love and purpose of 
our Father-God. 



9i 



VII. Why do not all the departed manifest 
themselves to those whom they have left be- 
hind? 

We can conceive of there being several rea- 
sons why they do not do so. 

I. Many who have passed into spirit-life have 
no desire to renew any intercourse with the world 
from which they have passed; and apart from the 
question of a ministry to us, entrusted, we be- 
lieve, to many of the Departed, the fact of hav- 
ing, or not having, a desire to re-establish 
earthly relationships will largely determine 
whether they do or do not re-establish the 
same. 

Now, in the case of many who depart this 
life, the world they have left behind exerts an 
enormous attracting power upon them. Spirit- 
ually undeveloped and unattuned for their new 
environment, their tastes and desires gravitate 
earthward. This class experience a desire to 
renew, if possible, their intercourse with the 
mundane. But there are a great number who 
pass hence, in regard to whom the world exerts 

92 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

no sufficiently attracting force to draw them 
back to it. Death has launched them into a 
new life, and they are devoid of any longing for 
the persons and things connected with the old. 
They resemble those in this world who are able 
to sever themselves from past associations, to 
betake themselves to another country and other 
surroundings, and never afterwards to feel any 
desire for that which has been left behind. This, 
we think, is so with regard to many of the de- 
parted whose earthly lot was one of predomi- 
nating suffering, or difficulty, or disappoint- 
ment. It is so, we think, in the case of those 
whose "sunshine of life" went with the dear 
ones taken from them by death. To them the 
new life with its reliefs and possibilities and its 
re-unions with those "loved long since, and lost 
awhile," causes all their interest in the old life 
to recede into the background of their con- 
sciousness, and at length to wholly fade away. 
If such as these come back at all, it is not from 
a desire to re-connect themselves with a world 
with which they have done, but to discharge 
some mission of good entrusted to them. 
Again, there are others of the departed who 
have no desire for renewed intercourse with 
this world, for the reason that they have never 
cultivated the qualities of love and sympathy. 

93 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

The greatest of all attracting forces in the uni- 
verse is love. It is the mighty power which, ac- 
cording to the Lord, will ultimately bring about 
the accomplishment of God's purpose to save 
the world. "I, if I be lifted up (if I make this 
supreme sacrifice of myself for the sake of love) 
zvill draw all unto Me" (John xii. 32). Love is 
that principle which can attract spirit-beings to 
the surroundings of the Physical who feel none 
of the attracting forces of evil. It drew the 
exalted Spirit-Christ from the highest spheres 
of life and experience to the circumscription of 
earthly existence. It has drawn angels to this 
world, and it can draw spirit-men and women 
as God's instruments for blessing and helping 
us. 

Now, the departed ones, between whom and 
others in the earth-life there exists no bond of 
love and sympathy, will feel nought of that 
higher impulse of the soul which expresses it- 
self in a longing for those who have been left 
behind. The attracting power of love, of spirit- 
ual affinity, will be wanting. There are many 
who answer to this; many men and women who 
go out of this world unloving and unloved; who 
are not bad enough (as in the case of debased 
ones) to be brought again into contact with the 
Physical by the irresistible attraction of evil; 

94 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

but are not spiritually developed enough to ex- 
perience any drawings of love. 

II. Another reason why all departed ones do 
not manifest themselves is to be found, we 
think, in the fact that the manifestation of which 
the questioner is thinking, involves the re-con- 
nection of spirit-beings with the Physical world. 
This, we conceive, may in many instances be in- 
compatible with growth and advancement in spirit- 
life. The conditions under which a spirit is able 
to manifest himself — using the term to convey 
the idea which is generally meant, viz., that a 
spirit should make himself visible, or express 
himself through the mediumship of the mind 
and bodily organs of another — implies associa- 
tion w r ith the Physical. This is so with regard 
to materializations, trance-utterances and auto- 
matic writings. The communicating spirit in 
such cases of manifestation brings himself into 
close association with the surroundings of the 
Physical; and these surroundings are lower in 
degree than those of his new life and environ- 
ment. This close association with the lower — 
especially if it be a maintained one, may consti- 
tute a very real obstacle to the discarnate one's 
adjusting himself to the higher spiritual experi- 
ences. His advance may be retarded thereby. 
By maintaining his association with the Physical 

95 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

World, it may be harder for him to become en 
rapport with the Spiritual. God may see it to 
be as undesirable and harmful to him to re-es- 
tablish a contact with the Physical, as a Princi- 
pal of a College might deem it undesirable for 
a student, designated for high culture, to asso- 
ciate with the unlearned and unrefined. We be- 
lieve that this is one of other reasons why those 
who pass out of the earth-life with some attune- 
ment for spiritual development, are not very 
often permitted to manifest themselves through 
those channels of communication which involve 
a re-contact with that which is connected with 
the Physical — such manifestations, for example, 
as are obtained at Seances. The spirits who are 
able, through the instrumentality of the Physi- 
cal, to materialize, are not, as a rule, advanced 
or spiritually developed ones. They are, cer- 
tainly, not beings on the higher, or highest, 
planes of spiritual life and experience. Such 
communicators, so dependent on conditions per- 
taining to the Physical — whose efforts are 
rather to manifest themselves objectively than 
subjectively — are feeble and disappointing in 
their utterances, as compared with those spirit- 
ual communicators who speak to many on the 
higher plane of mind and spirit. The trance- 
utterances and the inspirational writings exhibit 

9 6 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the control of a higher order than any which 
is presented in a materializing circle. 

Then, again, this view of the matter is sup- 
ported by the fact that, although at the outset 
of spirit-life many of the departed find it pos- 
sible to renew their association with the Phy- 
sical, it afterwards becomes increasingly diffi- 
cult for them to do so. Their advance in the 
Other World makes it so; and at length there 
comes a time when such intercourse is made im- 
possible. Advance in the Spiritual places them 
altogether out of reach of the Physical. Com- 
munication in that case between them and those 
in earth-life can only then be on the plane of 
the Psychic and the Mental. Nor is this a mere 
conjecture. There are many instances which go 
to show that as a spirit advances to higher ex- 
periences in the Spiritual World, it becomes 
more and more difficult to adjust himself to 
Physical conditions which are necessary, in or- 
der that he may objectively manifest himself to 
those on earth. 

I have personal friends who have seen once 
— in some cases twice — and no more, those who 
have appeared to them after death. One gen- 
tleman, known to me, had seen and spoken to 
his departed wife on many occasions, both by 

97 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

night and day, during a period extending over 
a year. He was an unimaginative, practical 
man, a lawyer, and he prefaced his statement 
to me by saying: "I am going to tell you 
something which is a solemn fact; but which I 
hardly expect you will believe; although you are 
a parson, and teach people that there is a Life 
Beyond." He assured me that he had seen his 
wife after her death on many occasions. That 
at one of the appearances to him she had earn- 
estly begged him to withdraw from a certain 
commercial enterprise upon which he had made 
up his mind to embark, because it would mean 
financial ruin to him. He was so impressed by 
what she said that he acted on her advice, and 
saved himself from that which, as was shown 
afterwards, would have been disastrous. After 
a while the visits of this spirit-wife became less 
frequent, and at last the reason was explained. 
On the last occasion she appeared to her hus- 
band, (he has rejoined her now) she told him 
that she felt that that manifestation would be 
her last to him in this world. She said that on 
entering into spirit-life her love for him, and 
his psychic condition had made it comparatively 
easy for her to objectively manifest herself to 
him. But as time went on, and her attunement 
with the World of Spirit had grown, she had 

9 8 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

found it becoming more and more difficult to 
retain her relationship with the Physical. She 
felt that no longer would she have the power 
of objectively manifesting herself to him. But 
still she would be constantly near him; in closer 
communion with him than she had ever hither- 
to been. Her inability to any longer approach 
him through the mediumship of the Physical 
would only mean a still closer and more real 
approach. Henceforth, the communication be- 
tween him and her would be on a higher level. 
Obedient to the demands of love, her rising and 
developing mind and spirit would constantly 
touch and help and bless his mind and spirit. 
Her prayers for him and his prayers for her 
were to strengthen and perfect the bond be- 
tween them. The union of mutually loving 
souls could never be dissolved, because God is 
Love. In this world, he would probably never 
see her again; but on the border-line and Be- 
yond, where the limitations of the Physical are 
forever cast aside, she would meet him, greet 
him, love him as she loved him now, and would 
be his pioneer to higher life. 

From that day, until he himself passed Be- 
yond the Veil, this friend constantly felt the 
presence of his departed wife, but never again 
saw her. 

99 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

From what has been said, it will be seen that 
another reason can be assigned for the fact that 
not all the departed are permitted to visibly 
manifest themselves to us. But it must not be 
supposed that this inability of dear departed 
ones to do this, is to be interpreted as meaning 
that they are unable to approach us and unable 
to come into vital touch with us. The contrary 
is the truth. Their ascension to higher life and 
experience renders them capable of establishing 
a communication on a higher plane of being — 
on the plane of mind and spirit. Many commun- 
icators from the Other Side, denied the power 
of visibly manifesting themselves to us here, be- 
cause their advancement will best be served by 
the denial, can come into a communication with 
us closer than that which any materializing 
spirit can effect. The concomitants of the Phy- 
sical may play no part in the contact; but the 
mind and spirit of the discarnate one and the 
mind and spirit of the earth one may come into 
conjunction. The being on the earth-plane may 
receive all sorts of uplifting and helpful influ- 
ences from the being on the spirit-plane. The 
sudden feeling of restfulness which comes to a 
poor distressed and perturbed one; the unex- 
pected ray of something akin to the light of 
hope which darts across the darkness of a sad- 

ioo 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

dened heart; the new impulse which challenges 
our right to surrender ourselves to despair and 
mental misery, and bids us to try to be brave 
and patient and unrebellious; the cause that 
leads us to make the earnest determination to 
trust God, to pray to Him amid the darkness 
of our grief and bereavement; yes, and that 
thrill of relief which comes from the thought 
of re-union — all this, we believe, may be the re- 
sult of an impact of a spirit-mind, energizing 
under higher conditions, upon the mind of a 
dweller upon the earth. "Nonsense; a slight to 
the Holy Spirit of God!" say some who know 
little about spiritual realities. "Not so," say 
we. "The blessing and uplifting is all from 
God. If discarnate spirits lift us Godward and 
heavenward, the power of the Holy Ghost is 
behind that uplifting. God is only dealing with 
us, as He always deals with men : He blesses us 
through our fellows. Why consider it a dispar- 
agement of the power and work of the Holy 
Ghost, that a departed one should be God's in- 
strument in teaching and blessing us, when no 
Christian would dream of entertaining such an 
idea in regard to an angel, or an earthly 
preacher or teacher of God and righteousness? 
Do let us be logical. God's principle of bless- 

IOI 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ing man through man obtains in the World of 
Spirit as it does here. 

III. There is another reason why not all of 
the departed manifest themselves to us. It lies 
in the fact that many of us are so psychically un- 
developed as to render it impossible for them to 
do so. 

Love may attract them to us; they may have 
an intense longing to be with us; there may be, 
moreover, an earnest desire to help us, and yet 
they may be wholly unable to set up a communi- 
cation of which we may be sensible. Why is 
this? The cause may lie with us. We may be 
so mentally and psychically constituted as to 
lack that which is a necessary condition of man- 
ifestation. Our spiritual self may not be suffi- 
ciently attuned to receive the impressions of the 
Spiritual. In regard to individuals it may be 
the same as it is in regard to Wireless Teleg- 
raphy — not all instruments can register the im- 
pulse which is projected, but only an attuned 
one. There are thousands of persons who have 
no experience whatever of any impact of the 
Spiritual, simply because they possess as yet 
no power of registering it. 

May there not have been a significance in our 
Lord's selecting only three of the Apostolic men 
to be the witnesses of the manifestation of de- 

I02 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

parted Moses on the Mountain of Transfigura- 
tion? May not St. Peter, St. James and St. 
John alone of the twelve have possessed the 
psychic powers, which made the revelation pos- 
sible to them, while not possible to the others? 
Thus, there are many who bemoan the fact that 
their dear departed ones never make their pres- 
ence manifest to them. Part of that regret 
and sadness would disappear, if it could but be 
realized that, although unseen and unfelt by us, 
our loved ones on the Other Side are often with 
us; that when the sight of the empty chair in 
the darkened home recalls the painful longings 
for the sight of a vanished face, and reopens the 
fountain of our grief — 

"Then the forms of the Departed 
Enter at the open door 
The beloved, the true-hearted, 
Come to visit me once more. 
With a slow and noiseless footstep 
Comes that messenger divine, 
Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
Lays her gentle hand in mine." 

IV. There is another reason, I think, why 
not all of the departed manifest themselves to 
us. Their knowledge of the fact that many have 

103 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

an unreasoning fear of the Spiritual restrains 
them. With some, the contact with a spiritual 
being, even with one who has loved and been 
beloved by them, calls for nought but a feeling 
of abject terror. Our spirit dear ones know 
this and it stays them from manifesting them- 
selves. 

I remember once trying to comfort a poor be- 
reaved one who had said that she could bear her 
sorrow bravely, if only she could know that her 
departed husband was alive and still loved her, 
by saying, "Perhaps, it may be permitted to 
him to appear to you (as others have done) and 
assure you of this." "Oh! goodness, graci- 
ous! I hope not. It would terrify me out of 
my life were he to come to me," was the reply 
of the lady. "Then I do not think you will see 
him, until you yourself cross the border-line. 
He loves you too much to terrify you," was the 
rejoinder. 

There are many of the departed, we believe, 
who do not manifest themselves to those whom 
they have left on earth for this very reason. 
Love draws them to them; love makes them 
want to communicate with them ; the conditions 
are favorable — the visitants and visited are in 
psychic affinity; and yet an obstacle is inter- 
posed; the dread of the Beyond is present. 

104 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

This intense fear of all that pertains to the 
Spiritual World is very inexplicable; at all 
events on the part of those who believe in the 
Christian religion. To profess a faith in con- 
tinued life after death; to regard that life as 
being an advance on this present life, and then 
to be stricken with abject fear at encountering 
one who has passed into that life, seems to us 
to savor of inconsistency. But so it is with 
many. An old clergyman friend of mine once 
said to me : "If I believed as you do about the 
spirit-world, I should be frightened to go to 
bed." Not so, our knowledge of the Other 
World removes this unreasoning fear, and clears 
away a barrier which at present stands between 
us and manv in that world. 



105 



VIII. Will the fact that beings in spirit-life 
are on different planes of life and experience, be 
an obstacle to re-union hereafter? 

This is a question which has exercised the 
minds of very many earnest thinkers, and one 
which has again and again been submitted by 
correspondents. It is a question which does 
not, of course, present itself to those Christians 
who accept the old "orthodox" view, that for 
believers a spiritual transformation is wrought 
by death, and that for non-believers no salvation 
after death is to be expected. 

Those persons, as far as they are consistent 
with their creed, entertain no hope of the re- 
union of themselves and those who have died as 
unbelievers. The theology they endorse 
teaches that a great gulf yawns between the 
saved and the unsaved, which will never be 
bridged. Re-union, in that case, is out of the 
question. Fortunately, the greater number 
who profess to accept this old notion, save them- 
selves from the mad-house, either by not allow- 
ing themselves to think about it, or by secretly 

1 06 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

hoping it may not be true. To such straits does 
a narrow theology reduce them. Those persons 
also, who believe in the morally and spiritually 
transforming power of death see no difficulty in 
regard to the re-union of souls. They suppose 
that all who depart this life in the Christian 
faith, whatever may be the point of develop- 
ment reached by them, are at death ushered into 
a condition of instantly-acquired excellence. 
Seizing the words of St. Paul and applying them 
indiscriminately to all believers, they imagine 
that every Christian, developed or undeveloped, 
will leave this world to be at once with Christ. 
Such an idea, of course, implies for all Chris- 
tians on the Other Side, not different planes, 
but a uniform plane, of life and experience. If 
it be true that at dying all believers go immedi- 
ately to be with the Saviour, then all such are 
in one sphere and on one plane of experience, 
and re-union becomes a foregone conclusion. 
But our advance in the knowledge of Spiritual 
matters has caused many to perceive that both 
these ideas referred to are un-scriptural and 
wrong. The great principle under which God 
is seen in everything to be working in the rais- 
ing of beings and things from the lower to the 
higher, is that which shows that development 

107 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

and perfection is never reached but by slow and 
gradual means. 

"First the blade, then the ear, after that the 
full corn in the ear," said Jesus; and He was 
proclaiming the law which obtains no less in the 
Spiritual than in the Physical. Our recogni- 
tion of this universal principle of being, our bet- 
ter understanding of the statements of the 
Bible, and our knowledge of the fact that very 
few depart this life in a moral and spiritual con- 
dition such as to equip them for adjustment to 
highest spiritual life — all this impels one to the 
conclusion that there are, and must be, in the 
Life Beyond different planes of experience; and 
that the sphere into which a soul will pass at 
death will be determined by the degree of de- 
velopment reached at that time. Like Judas, 
every one will "go to his own place." The one 
who has by faith connected himself with Christ, 
but in whom as yet the Christ-graces have not 
blossomed, will not, at dying, secure an entrance 
into that Christ-sphere of spirit-life, into which 
the Apostle so confidently expected to be ad- 
mitted on leaving this world. The connection 
of that undeveloped one with the Saviour will 
have placed him in a "state of salvation," and 
will have disposed him aright for ascension to 
sphere after sphere of higher attainment; but 

108 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

no more. The higher and the highest spheres 
of Spiritual life will not be reached until he 
shall have become spiritually adjusted to them. 
The spheres of the Other World are conditions 
rather than localities; they are constituted by 
what we are rather than by where we may be. 
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," said 
Jesus. The narrow-minded, selfish, bad-tem- 
pered, ill-mannered and unloving Christians will 
not, as soon as they go hence, find themselves 
in the same sphere as that of the Christ and St. 
Paul. Many a selfish one, who has reckoned 
on his "orthodoxy" to insure him against judg- 
ment hereafter, may find himself after death in 
experiences akin to those of Dives. Now, it is 
the realization of all this which has caused the 
questioner to ask — Will not these different 
planes of life and experience present an obstacle 
to re-union? We think not; and proceed to 
give our reasons for holding that view. 

First, if the spheres of the Other World be, 
as we have stated, conditions rather than locali- 
ties, there can be no difficulty in believing that 
the departed in different spheres come into re- 
lationship with one another. To believe other- 
wise would be to commit ourselves to a thought 
which is unreasonable, and at variance with 
what we know. There is intercourse between 

109 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the spheres in regard to this world. Men and 
women on earth are on all sorts of different 
planes of life and thought. That fact consti- 
tutes no barrier to their coming into contact. 
In like manner, the spiritual condition of some 
of the departed is wholly dissimilar to that 
of others; but this dissimilarity is no obstacle 
to their association. 

We have a notable corroboration of this asser- 
tion, in what is recorded in the New Testament 
concerning the experiences of our Lord after 
death. 

When Jesus, in company with the repentant 
robber, passed into the Spiritual World, His 
spiritual condition, or sphere, as the Being 
perfected in moral grace, must have been vastly 
different from the spiritual condition of the man 
who had but a moment or two before set his 
soul in the direction of goodness. On that 
Good Friday evening, they were not on the 
same plane of life and experience. Yet as far 
as the contact of person with person is con- 
cerned, there was re-union. They were to- 
gether. Christ's own words declare it — "To- 
day, shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Again, 
on the testimony of St. Peter, our Lord, after 
death, went into the Spirit- World to preach the 
Gospel to spirits who in earth-life had been dis- 

no 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

obedient, in order that they might "live accord- 
ing to God in the spirit." (See I Peter iii. 
18-20 and iv. 6). The Preacher was on a far 
higher plane of spiritual life and experience 
than that of the ones to whom He preached; 
but that was no obstacle to His association with 
them. In the parable of the rich man and Laz- 
arus, Christ represents the two men as being in 
wholly dissimilar spheres of experience in the 
Spirit-World: the one was in "Abraham's 
bosom" — in a condition of restfulness; the other, 
in "Hades" — in a condition of painful disci- 
pline. As yet, until God's knife of discipline had 
pruned away the over-growth of selfishness 
from the character of the rich man, there was 
"a great gulf fixed" between him and Lazarus; 
and Dives was incapable of participating in the 
higher spiritual experiences enjoyed by Laza- 
rus. But this difference in the spheres of these 
excarnate ones did not prevent them from com- 
ing into contact. There was inter-communica- 
tion between the spheres: the one on the lower 
plane saw and spoke to those on the higher 
plane. So, we believe it to be, in the case of the 
departed. We, when we pass into spirit-life, 
may be on a plane of life and experience, higher 
or lower than the plane of those who have pre- 
ceded us, and whom we have known and loved 

ill 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

in the earth-life. Will this dissimilarity in re- 
gard to planes render it impossible or improb- 
able that we shall come into communication 
with them ? We think not. We believe that, in 
the Spirit- World, the fact of being on different 
planes of life may, and does, cause some spirits 
who have been known to each other in this 
world, to be dissociated, for a while at least, 
in the Other World. But we do not think this 
to be so in the case of those between whom 
there has previously existed a bond of love or 
sympathy. Those whom we have loved on this 
earth, and who, perhaps, long ago, have gone 
into spirit-life, will have advanced to spheres of 
experience, to which we shall not immediately 
attain on leaving this world. But that will not 
involve dissociation from them until such time 
as we ourselves shall have scaled the moral and 
spiritual heights on which they stand. Love will 
draw those on the higher altitudes of being to 
us on the lower; as it drew Jesus and the angels 
from spheres of glory to the earth-plane. Those 
beloved and progressed departed ones will 
come to us when we "pass over;" and they will 
be with us at times; the old intercourse will be 
renewed; and as we move on towards attune- 
ment to their higher experiences, the bond be- 

112 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tween them and us will be strengthened and 
perfected. 

Thus we think that while, of course, in the 
case of spirit and spirit, a perfect union — an 
accord of mind and heart, a mutual participation 
in the higher experiences of spirit-life — can only 
exist when both shall have become adjusted to 
exalted environment; yet, in the meanwhile, 
there is a very real contact and association be- 
tween those who may stand in the Other World 
at different points of spiritual development. 

Surely, it must have been to teach us this, 
among other truths, that the New Testament 
writers told us about the excarnate Saviour in 
company with an excarnate robber and old- 
world sinners who had repented after death ! 

Secondly. We can assign another and very 
cogent reason for our belief in the re-union of 
the departed, in spite of their being on different 
planes of life and experience. It is this : that 
God's method of blessing men is that of doing 
so through the medinmship of others; and that 
the principle under which He acts in this in- 
strumental bestowal of blessings is, that "the less 
is blessed of the better." This method of Divine 
blessing is followed both in this world and in 
the greater World of Spirit. God blesses us 
through the instrumentality of others. That is 

113 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

so in regard to all earthly experience — is it not ? 
Every blessing, whether physical, mental or 
spiritual, received from God by us here, is con- 
veyed instrumentally; others are made His chan- 
nels of communication. Has He blessed us 
physically? Do we possess a body, a house, 
clothes, food and a thousand other terrestrial 
things? Not one of them has come to us apart 
from the interposition of others. Has He 
blessed us mentally? Are we persons of ex- 
tended knowledge as to the things which lie 
above us, around us and within us? Very little 
of that knowledge did we acquire, except 
through the instrumentality of others. Our fel- 
lows were God's agents in teaching us what we 
know; our lesser minds were blessed of the bet- 
ter minds. Has God blessed us spiritually, so 
that we have learned some of those great truths 
which centre themselves in Him, and have be- 
come thereby men or women of prayer and holy 
aspiration? Here, again, the blessing came to 
us through others. Fathers, mothers, friends, 
teachers, preachers, and writers — the ones bet- 
ter than ourselves in spiritual culture — were the 
connecting wires between God and us, through 
which the Divine sparks of grace passed to 
touch us, and turn our undeveloped spirit God- 
ward. Consider, further, this method of God in 

114 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the case of spiritual beings who have been used 
by Him as the instruments of blessing the 
dwellers upon earth. The Bible abounds in the 
accounts of angel messengers sent to men. Pa- 
triarchs and rulers received their guidance as 
the leaders of great religious, social and na- 
tional movements through the mediumship of 
them. Prophets and seers were inspired; men 
and women were helped and comforted; and 
even the Christ Himself in His hours of trial 
was ministered unto and supported through 
their agency. In all this, the method of God 
was the same; His blessing was bestowed 
through the instrumentality of others; and be- 
ings on the highest planes conveyed it to those 
on the earth-plane. 

Again, the more enlightened views concern- 
ing God and His purposes in regard to man- 
kind, which are held in this present age, are 
due, we believe, to the fact that a great wave 
of mental and spiritual influence is passing to 
us from the Other Side. The door between 
the two worlds has of late years been more 
widely opened. Departed ones, in the fulfillment 
of the possibility included in the "Communion 
of saints," have from their spheres of higher 
spiritual attainment touched us in the domain 
of mind and spirit. Materialistic Science has 

ii5 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

received its death-blow; the phenomena of hu- 
man existence is becoming inexplicable, except 
on the acknowledgment of the Spiritual; a new 
continent of life and possibility beyond the phys- 
ical is being opened up to us; and the Gospel 
of Jesus is becoming re-invested with the glory 
which the religious misrepresentations of past 
ages has bedimmed. And if this be so; if all 
this advance to clearer light on Divine truth, 
be the result of the impact of higher minds Be- 
hind the Veil upon our minds, what is it but 
another illustration of that great law of God — 
that man is blessed through others, and that 
"the less is blessed of the better!" 

Our argument will be complete when we 
think of this principle of blessing instrumentally 
and of blessing the lesser through the higher, in 
its application to beings in that great domain 
of life and experience — the Spiritual World. 
We believe the principle obtains with respect 
to the departed. 

Our advancement in the knowledge of higher 
truth has remodelled men's ideas concerning 
the Spiritual World. We no longer think of it 
as peopled with beings who are all similarly 
fashioned, mentally and spiritually, and all sim- 
ilarly circumstanced. We know it to be a world 
of infinite variety, of many spheres of life and ex- 

116 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

perience. Our Saviour Christ taught us this. 
He said, "In My Father's House are many tarry- 
ing-places" (fwval ttoXXcu) — many different 
spheres of life, in which spirits must remain 
awhile, until they become attuned for the planes 
of higher existence. Our fuller knowledge of 
truth has taught us, moreover, more concern- 
ing the purpose of God in regard to all His 
creatures. It is to bless, and not to curse; to 
save, and not to damn. The "Father's House" 
Beyond the Veil is no less the domain of salva- 
tion and blessing than is this earth. The 
method He adopts to raise and bless men there, 
is the same as that by which He raises and 
blesses us here, viz., our fellows are His instru- 
ments, and "the less is blessed of the better." 

Thus, there is presented to us the strongest 
of all reasons for believing, that the difference 
in the planes of life and experience of the de- 
parted constitutes no obstacle to re-union. Nay, 
this very variety in life and experience may be 
one of the greatest causes which promote re- 
union; for in obedience to that Divine principle 
to which we have referred, God, we believe, uses 
the ministry of souls in the higher spheres of 
spiritual-life, to inspire, to raise, to bless, to 
bring closer to Himself, the souls in lower 

117 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

spheres. The Divine modus operandi holds good 
in both worlds; because God is unchangeable, 
and His Christ, "the same all through the ages." 



118 



IX. Apart from direct communications from 
them, how may we best realize that the departed 
are still living, and in relationship with us? 

By the term "direct communications," the 
questioner is, of course, referring to the mani- 
festation to persons in earth-life of those who 
have "passed over," in such a way as to cause 
themselves to be seen, or heard, or their pres- 
ence felt. It has been shown in another part 
of this volume that this power of manifestation 
is not granted to all in spirit-life; and that, in 
many cases in which it is granted, the manifes- 
tation may not be made, because the necessary 
conditions may be lacking. The one on the 
earth-plane may be so psychically undeveloped 
as to render the departed one wholly incapable 
of making his presence realizable. The spirit- 
friend may be near us — so near, that were the 
faculties of our interior spirit-body opened (as 
were the spiritual eyes of the young man in the 
Bible story, and the spiritual eyes and ears of 
the three Apostles on the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion), we should see him, and hear him speak 

119 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

to us. But in the case of many who long for 
such a manifestation of departed ones, the in- 
terior powers are as yet unopened. Those dear 
ones may come to us, and we may not possess 
the ability to register their presence. By such 
psychically undeveloped ones, it is asked — How 
may we best realize that the departed are still 
living, and in relationship with us? 

The answer is a simple one. 

The first and greatest of all means for the at- 
tainment of this is by praying for them. 

Those teachers of the Christian religion who 
discountenance prayer for the departed rob the 
bereaved of one of the greatest consolations 
that the Gospel can give. They deny to them 
the one thing above all others which is most 
needed in that experience of separation and loss 
which comes with death. A beloved one is 
taken from us; the bond which linked us to that 
one appears to have been ruthlessly broken; 
the being himself has passed beyond the reach 
of our sight and touch; and the teachers of that 
school of religious thought to which I have al- 
luded, tell us that to pray for him is foolish, use- 
less, Popish and wrong. Some of them will tell 
us (as they have told me) that the mere sugges- 
tion of praying for the departed arises from the 
Devil. And so the poor mourner is left to get 

1 20 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

over his bereavement and distress in the best 
way he can. The most that the theology of that 
school can offer, is a hope that at some distant 
day we may see again the ones whom we have 
lost. Will this kind of teaching comfort and 
satisfy a poor saddened heart, or brighten a 
darkened life? We assert emphatically that it 
will not. If death removes from you one who 
is very near and dear to you, you cannot be 
comforted until you hold the conviction that 
that one is still living and still in relationship 
with you. The old theological notion as to 
death will not give you this conviction. I have 
received hundreds of letters from mourners in 
which it has been confessed that the thought of 
a resurrection and re-union at a distant day has 
brought not the slightest sense of relief to 
them. The mourner who is unable to realize 
that his departed beloved one is still living and 
still in relationship with him, is in much the 
same case as Martha was when her brother died, 
and she discovered that the doctrine of the 
resurrection of a dead man at the end of Time, 
was but a poor solace to her whose heart was 
crying out for a living brother. 

How suggestive that Gospel story is! Laza- 
rus had died, and Jesus was on His way to the 
mourning sisters. He is met by Martha, who 

121 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

sorrowfully reproaches Him for His delay in 
coming — "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my 
brother had not died." Note how the Saviour 
leads the mind of the woman to a conception 
of dying, not contained in the teaching of her 
day, viz., that death involves no cessation of 
being. From the starting point of the religious 
thought accepted by her, He will lift her to the 
perception of a far grander and more comfort- 
ing truth. "Jesus saith unto her — Thy brother 
shall be raised." There is a ring almost of im- 
patience and disappointment in the rejoinder 
of Martha, as if she said — "Oh ! I know that; 
from my childhood I have been taught to be- 
lieve that; I know that he shall rise in the Rising 
at the last day. But, Lord Jesus, it does not 
meet my case in the slightest degree. Is there 
nothing more you can tell me? It is of the 
present and not of the future I am thinking. It 
is the thought of a dead brother and our rela- 
tionship broken by death which darkens my 
mind and breaks my heart. The last day is so 
far off, and so detached from my present life 
and experience. In the meanwhile — what? 
Oh ! I want, I want a living brother" 

How splendidly was the answer to that cry 
of the woman's heart voiced by Jesus, in that 
declaration that physical death touches not the 

122 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

man, but only "the tabernacle" of him. "I, My- 
self, am the Rising and the Life; he that is trust- 
ing in Me, though he be (as you call it) 'dead,' 
yet he shall live; and every one who is living and 
trusting in Me, shall by no means die all 
through the aeon. Trustest thou this — this glori- 
ous truth I declare?" (John xi. 25 and 26.) 
Poor Martha! She did not answer that ques- 
tion of Jesus; but we can believe that hence- 
forth she would no longer regard death as the 
Extinguisher of man's being, and the Destroyer 
of the relationships of Love. The truth un- 
realized by the Rabbis was disclosed by the 
Christ. 

I have said that prayer for the departed, more 
than anything else — more than all the reading 
of devout books on Heaven and the Future, and 
all our fond recollections of those who are 
gone — will give us the conviction that the latter 
are still living, and that the relationship be- 
tween them and us is still maintained. 

Try it. Pray for that dear one whom God 
has called hence, and in whom your whole soul 
and life, perhaps, was wrapped up. Pray for 
him or her; not once, not twice, but every day 
and anywhere; and gradually there will come 
to your poor bereaved soul the glorious assur- 
ance that the one you love — though the earthly 

123 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

body lie crumbling in the dust, is a being of 
life and thought, and of continued love for you. 
Gradually such prayers will make you realize 
that the World of Spirit is close to you now; 
that already you partly live in it; and that death 
which calls your dear ones more fully into it, 
does but usher them into a higher domain of 
life and thought, where nought begotten of 
love shall suffer loss. 

There is another way, less potent than prayer, 
by which we may assist ourselves in realizing 
that our departed ones still live and are still in 
relationship with us. It is by making the effort 
to calm the mind when under the experience of 
bereavement and sorrow. Excessive grief, and 
still more despair, raise a barrier which prevents 
many a dear one on the Other Side from com- 
ing near to us. Rebellious and hopeless sorrow 
is a hindrance to them in fulfilling a Divine mis- 
sion of comforting the broken-hearted. Uplift- 
ing and helpful thoughts and soul-impulses pro- 
jected by them to us are often not received; be- 
cause the receiving mind is so engrossed with 
its own thoughts and emotions, as to make it in- 
sensible to an impact from without. The "still, 
small voice" by which God would speak to us 
through the mediumship of spirit-mind, cannot 
be heard until there comes the calm after the 

124 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

storm, the earthquake and the fire. Be quiet, 
be trustful, be expectant. Make the effort to 
get the mind, at times, into a condition of pas- 
sivity; to take it off the thought of one's self; 
to thrust into the background of consciousness 
for a while the fact of one's own suffering and 
loss. Then, when the tumult of grief has thus 
been stilled, when the mind has been turned 
from the thought of self to the thought of 
the living dear one Behind the Veil — then let 
the words of prayer ascend. The calm, the 
love, the heroism, the determination to trust 
God on our part, will constitute the conditions 
whereby the departed, although visually and 
audibly unmanifested to us, may come very near 
to us, and touch us in the higher parts of our 
being — our mind and spirit. In this way, we 
may realize their presence and feel their main- 
tained connectedness with us. Although we 
may not possess the psychic gifts that others 
have, our experience may be akin to the ex- 
perience of a gentleman whose letter has 
reached me as I write this. He states — "Seven- 
teen years ago, I lost my young wife after a 
week's illness. To my surprise, amid the 
depths of horror and loss, I found a strange ex- 
hilaration, and a consciousness of her real presence, 
which never left me. I speak of this as an ac- 

125 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tual experience of real life. I am convinced 
that the incident of what we call 'death* to our 
physical bodies is powerless to destroy either 
character or companionship." 



126 



X. Are not such expressions as — "The sea 
gave up the dead which were in it," "Them which 
sleep," and "Those that are in the graves" — an in- 
dication that the New Testament writers re- 
garded death as a temporary cessation of con- 
scious being? 

No; the use of these and similar phrases to be 
found in the Bible must no more be taken to 
denote that the persons who used them ac- 
cepted the idea which they literally express, 
than does our common use of phrases, which 
are scientifically inaccurate, imply that we en- 
dorse the inaccuracies contained therein. For 
instance, the ordinary way of describing the 
fact that the sun comes into, and disappears 
from, the view of us on this planet, is by saying 
it rises and sets. Literally, the statement is un- 
true. The sun does not rise, nor does it set. It 
merely appears to persons stationed on a revolv- 
ing globe to do so. The statement originated 
with those whose astronomical notions were 
wrong. 

Now, no one supposes that the scientists of 

127 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

to-day who still use the phrases "sunrise" and 
"sunset," profess thereby their belief in the old 
error which those phrases connote, viz., that 
this earth is the centre around which the sun 
and the planets rotate. The use of the phrases 
is perpetuated, because they have become the 
popular and convenient method of describing 
certain solar phenomena. 

Take another instance. If we are standing 
on the deck of a vessel travelling oceanwards 
and watching the shore, we speak of "the re- 
ceding land." That is the popular way of de- 
scribing an appearance which is presented to 
us. But the statement is inaccurate; and in 
making use of it, we do not imply that we think 
the land is receding from us. We know per- 
fectly well that it is we who are receding from 
the land. We simply make use of a common 
idiom, which serves to express an experience, 
though it misrepresents the actual fact. No one 
finds fault with us for doing this; and no one 
imagines that we know no better, because we 
refer to things in the same terms as they are 
generally referred to. Take another notable 
instance of what I mean. Many who accept the 
Christian Faith, account it a most laudable prac- 
tice to pray for persons who have gone out of 
this life. They do so, because they are con- 

128 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

vinced that the latter are not dead, but con- 
sciously living. That constitutes the raison d* 
etre of their prayers for them. When the world 
persists in speaking of these departed ones as 
"the dead," the Christian Church declares that 
the world does not realize a great truth which 
she does. And yet she takes hold of this very 
phrase which the world has. so wrongly applied 
to the departed, and enjoins our "Prayers for 
the dead." Is that to be taken as denoting that 
the Church regards death as involving a cessa- 
tion of being? 

Moreover, we ourselves, who do not dream 
of confounding the departed ones who have 
passed into the fuller life of the Spirit-World, 
with the discarded and lifeless tenements which 
have been consigned to the grave, constantly 
find ourselves speaking of those living ones as 
"the dead." "My father, my mother, or my 
friend, has been dead a great many years," say 
we. Is our adoption of the popular idiom to 
be taken as implying that we do not believe in 
maintained existence at death? Now, the same 
argument holds good in regard to the fact that 
our Lord and the writers of the New Testament 
used the commonly accepted terms — "the 
dead," "those in the graves," etc., when refer- 
ring to the departed. They did not thereby en- 

129 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

dorse the popular definition as being a correct 
one; nor did they imply that they themselves 
believed the departed to be temporarily non- 
existent. They simply employed an established 
form of expression as the best means of indicat- 
ing the class of whom they were speaking. The 
world called the departed "the dead;" and they 
used, as we do, the language of the world, and 
spoke of those who had gone hence in exactly 
the way in which all mankind spoke of them. 

We cannot see how Christ and the Apostles 
could have done otherwise. It seems to us that 
in conveying higher truth to mankind, there 
was a necessity that they should make use of 
the terms of ordinary human language. How 
could they have made it clear as to whom they 
were referring, when making startling state- 
ments concerning the so-called "deceased," if 
they had described that class in a way in which 
it never was described? Before the fuller light 
had been vouchsafed by Jesus, the world had 
looked on Physical death, and it had seemed 
to them to be the destroyer of conscious being. 
The defunct body appeared to denote the de- 
funct man. Consequently, those who had died 
were spoken of as "the dead," "the ones in the 
grave," or — more euphemistically and poetic- 
ally — "the sleepers in the dust." 

130 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

And such terms became the common way — 
the only way of speaking of the departed. 

Presently, the Christ with His Gospel of Life 
and Immortality came, and disclosed the glori- 
ous fact that those whom men call "dead" are 
not dead at all. He taught that physical dying 
involves no destruction of the man, nor tem- 
porary cessation of his being. Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob — "dead" for ages, as the world ac- 
counted them — were all living unto God, said 
He. He told a dying robber that on the day 
the body of the latter and His own Body died, 
they, the men, should be together in Paradise. 
And Jesus forced home the truth by confront- 
ing some of His followers with a living Moses 
whose body had gone to the grave fifteen hun- 
dred years before. Moreover, Jesus disclosed 
another glorious truth, viz., that His mission 
of salvation was to be directed not only to men 
in this world, but also to those who had passed 
hence, and were living men in the Spirit-World. 
How could He make it clear to His hearers that 
He was really referring to the latter? If He 
spoke of them as "the living," it would be more 
than likely that His words would be taken to 
mean the persons who had not died. As yet, 
the world had grasped nought of the idea of 
any community of interest between those in 

131 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

this world and those in the Other World, in 
regard to the saving purpose of God. If He 
spoke of them as "the departed," still His words 
would be open to misconstruction by many. 
And so the Revealer of Truth did the wisest 
and best thing He could do — He adapted Him- 
self to popular language, in order that from the 
starting point of unenlightened thought, He 
might raise men's minds to truer ideas. 

Take those words of the Saviour — "The hour 
is coming, in the which 'all that are in the 
graves' shall hear His voice" (John v. 28), 
and "The hour is coming, and now is, when 
'the dead' shall hear the voice of the Son of 
God." (John v. 25). He was alluding to that 
magnificent fact to which St. Peter afterwards 
alluded; which is, that Christ is no less a Saviour 
to those in the Other World than He is to us 
in this world. St. Peter, having declared that 
Jesus, after crucifixion, preached to ones de- 
parted this life ("the spirits in keeping" — 
I Peter iii. 19), actually makes use of, as his 
Master did, the common term applied to them 
— "the dead." He writes, "For this cause was 
the Gospel preached also to them that are 
Mead,' that they might be judged according to 
(i. e. by the same standard as) men in the flesh, 
but live according to God in the spirit" (I Pet. 

132 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

iv. 6). We have a notable instance of the 
necessity to Christ and the sacred teachers of 
adapting themselves to the common idioms of 
their day. Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, had 
physically died, and our Lord was conscious of 
it. Christ knew that the death of the bodily 
organization had not killed the man. The real 
Lazarus — the spirit-man encased in a spirit- 
body — while in a condition of temporary sleep, 
had left his dead earthly tabernacle. Jesus knew 
that he was still sleeping, and that although he 
had passed out of the Physical body which was 
dead, he had not awakened in the Spiritual. It 
was not the intention of Jesus that he should 
awake in the Spiritual. The spirit-man, with- 
out any experience of the Spiritual World, be- 
cause he would be sleeping all the while he was 
absent from the body, would only awake when 
the power of Christ should re-incarnate him in 
a re-animated body which now was lying dead 
in a sepulchre. And so the Master said to the 
disciples — "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; .but I 
go that I may awake him out of sleep." They 
did not understand Him. They did not know 
that Jesus was voicing the great psychic fact 
that every person in quitting the physical body 
at death, does so in a condition of sleep, and 

133 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

only awakes when the detachment has been ef- 
fected. 

The disciples thought "He had spoken of 
taking of rest in sleep." But here is the point — 
Jesus had to resort to the limitations of ordi- 
nary ideas and language, before He could make 
His meaning clear. "Then said Jesus unto them 
plainly — Lazarus is dead" But he was not 
dead; and the Master said he was not dead. 
Those, then, who argue that the use of 
the terms we have been considering, com- 
mits our Lord and the Apostles to the en- 
dorsement of the idea that death involves the 
cessation of conscious being, are wholly mis- 
taken. If their use of these terms did commit 
them to such an endorsement, then where would 
be the consistency of the Divine speaker and 
the sacred writers in representing the "dead" 
ones and those "in the graves" as capable of 
powers which only the living possess ? It is only 
the living man, in this world or the other, that 
can hear the living voice of the Christ of Life. 
But all the difficulty connected with the New 
Testament writers' use of these old-world 
phrases, would disappear, if the words were ex- 
pressed as quotations, and it were remembered 
that these phrases were used, because the ordi- 
nary language of mankind had to be spoken, if 

134 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the teachers were to be understood. Thus, 
when Jesus said — "The hour now is, when 'the 
dead' shall hear the Voice of the Son of God" — , 
He did not mean that lifeless, disintegrated 
physical objects lying in the grave, or in the 
sea, or anywhere else, would hear Him speak 
to them. Without mind, without ears, without 
any semblance to bodily or spiritual organiza- 
tion, and without life — how could they do so ! 

No; He meant that the glorious call from His 
Divine Lips to advancement and more abundant 
life in God should be heard, not only by incar- 
nate men and women in the cities and villages 
and highways and by-ways of Palestine, but by 
the living discarnate ones Behind the Veil. 
"The hour is coming, and now is, when 'the 
dead' (i. e. the ones whom you in your ignor- 
ance call 'dead') shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God." 



135 



PART II. 

I. As reported in the "Church Times" of 
March gth, 1906, the Bishop of London, in an- 
swering in public two letters ■which had been 
sent to him, made the following statement : "The 
writers have been reading the work — 'Our Life 
After Death,' and ask what they ought to be- 
lieve. That book teaches Universalism. It leaves 
out the strong things Jesus Christ said. What is 
called 'the strong language of the Athanasian 
Creed,' is our Lord's own teaching. Are we, His 
Church, to water down what He said?" 

These are statements, sufficiently grave and 
important, to warrant me in dealing with them 
in the pages of this book. 

"That book teaches Universalis^," says the 
critic. Most undoubtedly it does so; and if the 
criticism had ended there, we should have had 
no reply to make to it, except that Universalism 
is most clearly taught in the Bible. But the fol- 
lowing part of the criticism seems to imply that 
the Universalist belief is incompatible wth the 
doctrine of the Church of England. 

We subjoin the following facts, which, in our 

136 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

view, show that Universalism is not out of har- 
mony with the teaching of the Church of Eng- 
land; however much it may be in non-agree- 
ment with the teaching of individual members 
of that Church. 

I. It is not generally known that the Fathers 
of the early Eastern Church avowed their be- 
lief in Universalism, and emphatically taught 
that Christ will ultimately fulfil His mission as 
''the Saviour of all men." That evil would re- 
main forever as the rival principle to God and 
goodness, presented itself to them as a thought 
inconsistent and intolerable. They regarded it 
as impossible, that an Almighty God, "Who is 
not willing that any should perish, but that all 
should come to repentance" (II Peter iii. 9), 
should, nevertheless, in the case of countless 
millions of the human race, be never able to ac- 
complish His will. The exaltation of Satan to 
such pre-eminence and power, as to regard him 
as a being capable of everlastingly frustrating 
the saving power of God, and of perpetually 
usurping the rule over the greater part of the 
empire of human souls, was to them an idea 
akin to the old world notion of rival gods — a 
god of Goodness and a god of Evil. A study 
of the Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theolo- 
gies shows that it was the contact of the Chris- 

137 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tian religion with the Latin race, which caused 
the adoption of a restricted view of God's pur- 
pose and Christ's Saviourhood. That race was 
proud, exclusive and cruel in its instincts, and 
when, under Constantine, Christianity became 
the State religion of the Roman Empire, the 
characteristics of the race made their impress 
upon the teaching of the Church. The Church 
of England, in matters of doctrine, commends 
the principle of appealing to the first three cen- 
turies of the Christian era. She could hardly 
do this, if the Universalist belief, so widely held 
by the early Church Fathers, were incompatible 
with her teaching! 

II. In the year 1552, a Body of Articles, 
known as the "Forty-two Articles," was agreed 
upon by the Bishops and other learned men of 
the Church of England. The 42nd Article was 
one which condemned those who asserted that 
all men would finally be saved. This article was 
deliberately expunged in 1 562. Surely the Church 
would not have done this, had she viewed the 
Universalist position as an inadmissible one! 
"The 42nd Article was withdrawn" (said a 
Bishop of Manchester), "because the Church, 
knowing that men like Origen, Clement and 
Gregory of Nyssa, were Universalists, refused 
to dogmatize." 

138 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Again, at one of the revisions of our Prayer 
Book, a demand was made by the Puritan Re- 
formers, to expunge from the Litany the words 
— "That it may please Thee to have mercy upon 
all men." The objectors asserted that as the 
purpose of God does not embrace the salva- 
tion of all men, it was manifestly inconsistent to 
pray for mercy for all. 

The Bishop's reply was that the clause was 
perfectly Scriptural, and that we have no right 
to limit the mercy of God. The retention of 
this all-embracive petition in the Litany is 
therefore, surety, another indication that a be- 
lief in Universalism is not incompatible with the 
teaching of the Church of England. 

III. But we turn to other parts of the 
Prayer Book in support of our assertion. 

Do we not, in the same Litany, twice address 
our Lord Jesus Christ as the "Lamb of God 
that taketh away the sins of the world?' Do we 
not, in Holy Communion, repeat three times in 
one prayer this same address to Christ? We 
ask, are these words not a solemn exaggeration, 
if for ever, in hell, the sins of any men are to 
remain, not taken away? 

In the Proper Preface for Easter Day, we say 
that Christ "by His death hath destroyed death" 

139 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

But to abolish death surely must mean to abol- 
ish all that sin has brought on man. 

Death, in its Scriptural significance, stands 
for alienation from God. If souls are to remain 
everlastingly alienated from Him, is it true to 
say that Christ is the destroyer of death ? 

In the Prayer of Humble Access, we say of 
God — "Whose property is always to have mercy." 

Can that statement be harmonized with the 
idea of a hereafter condition for many, in which 
there will be no exercise of mercy? 

One of the Ember Collects has these words — 
"To those who shall be ordained .... give Thy 
grace — that they may set forward the salvation 
of all men" Either the words contemplate the 
salvation of all, or they formulate a prayer 
which it is believed will not be granted. 

In the General Thanksgiving, we bless God 
for our creation. If creation, for a vast multi- 
tude of the human race, will mean, as we have 
been told, everlasting ruin and suffering, is there 
any cause for blessing God for the creation of 
these poor, wretched beings? And was not the 
argument advanced by a certain one against 
marriage, a perfectly sound and logical one, 
from the standpoint of that theology which we 
reject? — "If I were to marry," said he, "I might 
beget children, and some of them might spend 

140 



™ 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Eternity in hell. There could be no happiness 
for me in Heaven, if I had to reflect that / was 
the instrumental cause of the existence of irre- 
mediably damned souls." 

In the Church Catechism, the work of God 
the Son is defined in these words — "Who hath 
redeemed me and all mankind!' We ask, is this 
statement true, if all mankind is not to be re- 
deemed? We must be consistent; if any, even 
one of the human race be finally and irretriev- 
ably lost, then Christ has not redeemed all man- 
kind. 

We might adduce many more statements of 
the Prayer Book to show that that Book sanc- 
tions the teaching - of the "Larger Hope": but 
these will suffice. 

My critic states — "What is called 'the strong 
language of the Athanasian Creed, is our Lord's 
own teaching." 

In the first place, the Athanasian Creed stands 
on a very different footing, as constituting an 
authoritative statement of Christian belief, from 
that of the other two Creeds — "the Apostles' ' 
and "the Nicene." These latter received the 
sanction of General Councils of the Church; the 
so-called "Athanasian Creed" never received 
such sanction. It forced its way, with its "dam- 
natory clauses," into the formularies of the 

141 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Christian Church, in spite of no authority from 
a General Church Council, and in defiance of 
the stipulation laid down by the Council which 
authorized the use of the Nicene Creed — that 
nothing was to be added to this last-named Con- 
fession of Faith. 

The contrast presented between the Apostles* 
and Nicene Creeds and the "Athanasian" Creed 
is very suggestive. The Apostles' Creed ends 
with the words — "The Life everlasting," and 
the Nicene Creed, with the words — "The life of 
the world to come." The "Athanasian" Creed 
concludes with the awful words — "everlasting 
fire." That fact, in itself, gives a very good in- 
dication of its Western, rather than Eastern, ori- 
gin. Without entering into the history of the 
"Athanasian" Creed, it will be sufficient to say 
that it is admitted by all scholars that it was not 
written by the man whose name it bears. It 
treats of heresies which had not arisen until long 
after his death. The origin of it is very ob- 
scure. The internal evidence points to the con- 
clusion that it was probably composed by a 
bishop, in Gaul, about A. D. 420-430. It was 
first admitted into the Gallican Psalter, and was 
afterwards received into the Office of the Eng- 
lish Church during the ninth century. 

We mention all this, merely to show that the 

142 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

"Athanasian" Creed is not of the same author- 
ity as are the other two Creeds. There are 
many of us who experience a feeling akin to 
pain, at being asked by our Church, on the 
great Festivals of Christmas and Easter, to pub- 
licly profess our belief, that millions of our fel- 
low creatures will "without doubt, perish ever- 
lastingly," because, as yet, they are without 
Christ, or cannot see "eye to eye" with us in 
our conceptions of Him. An ever-increasing 
number is praying God that this antiquated 
"symbol," which "shuts the door of Hope" 
against nine-tenths of the human race, may soon 
be removed from our beautiful Service, and no 
longer jar on the spiritual nerves of those who 
come to church to bless God for His "inestima- 
ble love in the redemption of the world." 

If the sweeping and awful words of condem- 
nation in this "Creed" were true, they should 
call forth from the congregation a wail of pity 
and despair. Can anything, we ask, be more 
unseemly and more un-Christlike, than to feel 
jubilant and ascribe "glory" to God, at the pros- 
pect of wretched beings who will be doomed to 
the inconceivable horrors of "everlasting fire?" 
If we really believed these "damnatory clauses," 
instead of singing a Doxology, we should fall 
down on our knees, and with agonized hearts 

143 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

and streaming eyes, cry, — "Spare them, oh! 
spare them, merciful God!" 

There is something rather saddening, rather 
indicative of an insensibility to others' woes, in 
the fact that hundreds of thousands of Chris- 
tians, on the birthday of the Saviour, glibly en- 
dorse the hopeless statements of this "Creed," 
and then go home with an unimpaired appetite 
for their Christmas dinner! 

My distinguished critic says that the teaching 
of this "Creed" is "our Lord's own teaching." 

Let us examine this statement. 

The "Creed" starts with the words — "Who- 
soever will be (i. e. is willing to be) saved, be- 
fore all things it is necessary that he hold the 
Catholic Faith." The Catholic Faith is defined 
— "That we worship one God in Trinity, and 
Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Per- 
sons, nor dividing the Substance." 

I pass over the fact that not one-half of Chris- 
tendom understands the metaphysical meaning 
of this word — "Substance." That clause of the 
"Creed" is, therefore, unintelligible to them. 
Are they outside the "Catholic Faith" in conse- 
quence? 

Again, there is a very considerable body of 
Christians who view Christ as the only possible 
manifestation of God the Father. They take 

144 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the words of Jesus literally — "He that hath seen 
Me, hath seen the Father' (John xiv. 9). They 
believe that when our Lord walked this earth, 
the Father was incarnate in that human Body. 
We think they "confound the Persons." They 
love Christ, serve Him and worship Him, but, 
according to the "Athanasian Creed," they do 
not hold the Catholic Faith. Will they, "with- 
out doubt, perish everlastingly" ? 

We take another instance — a very common 
one. 

A man of business, religiously disposed, 
comes to church, and says his prayers, because 
he sincerely desires to do the right, and to live 
in communion with God. We tell him, in this 
"Creed," that if he wills to be saved, he must 
believe that "the Father is God, the Son is God, 
and that the Holy Ghost is God; and that yet 
there are not three Gods, but one God." That 
mystifies him. "Three times one are not one," 
he says. He does not understand it; but he 
goes on praying to the great All-Father, in the 
Name of Jesus Christ. He sets the mental sub- 
tilty aside; and, according to the "Athanasian 
Creed," he does not hold a foremost Article of 
the "Faith." Will he "without doubt, perish 
everlastingly"? We do not think he will. 

Further, this "Creed" asserts — "The whole 

145 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Three Persons are co-eternal together and co- 
equal" Here is a man who detects, or thinks 
he detects, a contradiction in these words and 
the words of Scripture. 

He remembers the words of Jesus — "My 
Father is greater than all" (John x. 29) ; and the 
words of St. Paul — "Then shall the Son also 
Himself be subject unto Him that put all things 
under Him, that God (the Father) may be all 
in all" (1 Cor. xv. 28). He, honestly, cannot 
reconcile Christ's and St. Paul's words with the 
idea of co-equality. He is not "in tune" with 
the "Creed's" presentment of "Catholic Faith." 
Will he, "without doubt, perish everlastingly"? 
We do not think he will. 

But we ask — Did our Lord Jesus Christ ever 
teach, that in order to be saved, "before all 
things it is necessary to hold the Catholic 
Faith," as defined by the "Athanasian Creed"? 
Did He ever teach that a man's acceptance by 
God depends upon his assent to a number of 
metaphysical ideas concerning Himself? Many 
came to Christ for blessing, and received it, who 
had very imperfect ideas of Him as the Son of 
God; many whose conceptions of Him had risen 
no higher than the thought that He was a 
Prophet invested with extraordinary powers. 
One has only to read the Gospel narratives to 

146 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

perceive that the only pre-requisite He laid 
down for the obtaining of blessing from Him, 
was that men should have trust in Him. They 
obtained His blessing, because they relied upon 
His goodness and power. He focussed the 
mind of men upon Himself, as He stood mani- 
fested to them; not upon any particular abstract 
ideas which subsequent ages might form of 
Him. The "Athanasian Creed'' makes the sal- 
vation of men to depend, not upon the glorious 
fact that Christ will "save to the uttermost them 
that come unto God by Him" (Heb. vii. 25), 
but upon the acceptance of definitions, not for- 
mulated by Jesus, but by a document drawn up 
by an unknown author in the long-ago. 

So, in answer to our critic, we as positively 
deny, as he has asserted, that the teachings of 
this "Creed" — which rests the salvation of man- 
kind upon the acceptance of certain Christologi- 
cal ideas engendered in the atmosphere of con- 
troversy — is the teaching of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

He never defined the Trinity. He presented 
Himself as the Embodiment and the Manifes- 
tation to men of Divine Love and Compassion, 
and said — "I and my Father are one" (John x. 
30); "The Father Is in Me, and I in Him" 
(John x. 38) ; "He that hath seen Me hath 

147 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

seen the Father" (John xiv. 9); "Ye believe 
in God, believe also in Me" (John xiv. 1); and 
there He left it. Men looked at Him and recog- 
nized Divine Love shining through Him, and 
were drawn thereby to the Father-God. It was 
left to later ages to bedim men's vision of the 
beautiful Christ, by a cloud of metaphysical 
speculations; and this "Creed" substitutes, as a 
condition of salvation, for a simple trust in a 
Divine Person, the holding of a certain set of 
theological ideas concerning His Personality. 
We contend that our Lord, while He did teach 
that upon Himself depended the salvation of 
mankind, never taught that anyone would per- 
ish, unless he should keep "whole and unde- 
filed" the mystifying doctrinal pronouncements 
of the "Athanasian Creed." 

But it is in respect to "the strong language" 
of this "Creed," i. e., the "damnatory" clauses — 
that we take a still greater exception to our 
critic's remark as to their being "our Lord's 
own teaching." 

The clauses which come under this heading 
are these — "He shall perish everlastingly" and 
"They that have done evil (shall go) into ever- 
lasting fire" 

The concluding paragraph of this "Creed" 
accounts these two clauses as a part of "the 

148 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Faith" necessary for salvation. — "This is the 
Catholic Faith, which except a man 'believe 
faithfully, he cannot be saved." 

Let us see to what this paragraph just quoted 
commits us. 

We must "believe faithfully" that there will 
be some who will "perish everlastingly" and "go 
into everlasting fire." What do these pro- 
nouncements teach? There can be no doubt on 
that point. They teach, plainly and unequivo- 
cally, the doctrine which has lain for sixteen 
centuries as a dark shadow and an incubus upon 
the Gospel of Christ. — I mean the doctrine of 
an everlasting Hell of suffering and misery, and 
of awful and irretrievable ruin to human souls. 
These phrases connote the idea that there will 
exist forever in the universe a discord, a hor- 
ror, a condition of things utterly abhorrent to 
a Being of Holiness and Love; which condition 
will bear witness that Evil is so strong and per- 
manent a Principle, that even God Himself, 
though He hate it, cannot abolish it. 

These "damnatory clauses" teach the doc- 
trine of unending pain and woe for all who do 
not hold this "Creed's" presentment of the 
"Catholic Faith." 

That was the idea of the unknown author of 
the "Creed." He voiced the theological con- 

149 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ceptions of Western Christendom at the time 
he composed it. Then, again, these clauses 
have always been regarded as bearing the sig- 
nification we have expressed. Romanists and 
Protestants alike have used them as main-props 
of the horrible dogma of everlasting Hell-fire. 
Those in the Church who have been the 
staunchest upholders of this dogma, have been 
the ones who have most resented any interfer- 
ence with the "Athanasian Creed." 

We are aware that many recite, in Church, 
these awful words of condemnation, with a sort 
of mental reservation, which leads them to think 
that they cannot mean anything quite so dread- 
ful and incredible as they seem to express. They 
are quite mistaken. The "damnatory clauses" 
do teach, and they were meant to teach, the 
doctrine of everlasting woe. Those who reject 
this doctrine are not consistent in reciting words 
in which that doctrine has been intentionally 
embodied. 

But is it true that these awful clauses are 
"our Lord's own teaching" ? 

We submit that Christ never taught that 
souls will "perish everlastingly'' or that they 
will go into an "everlasting fire." We admit, of 
course, that there are a few passages in the 
Authorized English Version of the New. Testa- 

150 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ment, which, as they stand, give a sanction to 
the idea of unending perdition. But the words 
have been mistranslated, and made to express 
something they were never intended to express. 
Our Lord did teach that those who rejected 
Him and truth and remained impenitent should 
"die in their sins" (2 John viii. 24), and that 
for some there should be terrible experiences, 
symbolized by the terms — "the Gehenna of 
Fire," "the Darkness without," and "the weep- 
ing and wailing and gnashing of teeth;" but He 
never said that souls should perish everlastingly. 
His parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus shows 
that His view of future punishment was, that it 
is disciplinary and remedial, and not vindictive 
and final. Terrible as were the experiences af- 
ter death of the selfish rich man, Christ repre- 
sents him as developing, in Hades, the God-like 
qualities of sympathy, unselfishness and concern 
for others. Such a representation is compatible 
with the idea of the "saving so as by fire," and 
that these terrible experiences into which hu- 
man souls may plunge themselves, are the 
"sterner resources of Divine Love" for the re- 
covery and not for the final damnation of any; 
but it is wholly incompatible with the idea of 
perishing everlastingly. We can conceive of 
nothing more contradictory in regard to God's 

151 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Almightiness and desire that none should per- 
ish, than that the judgments of God should im- 
prove a man, and yet, nevertheless, that he 
should remain everlastingly lost. 

The texts, we suppose, upon which our critic 
would pre-eminently base his assertion that the 
''damnatory clauses" of the "Athanasian Creed" 
are "our Lord's own teaching," are Matt, xviii. 
8 and xxv. 46. 

In their mistranslated form they stand — "To 
be cast into everlasting fire"; "These shall go 
away into everlasting punishment." The Greek 
of those passages is — "To be cast into the fire 
which is aionial, or age-long'' ; "These shall go 
away unto an age-long pruning." There is an 
infinite difference between "age-long" and 
"everlasting," and "pruning" and "punish- 
ment;" and no intelligent person doubts that 
Christ used the word "fire" in a figurative sense. 

But after all, the strongest argument we can 
advance for denying that "our Lord's own teach- 
ing" was identical with that of the "damnatory 
clauses" is, that if He taught that there is an 
everlasting Hell-fire in which human beings will 
perish everlastingly, He contradicted Himself, 
and set forth two teachings absolutely irrecon- 
cilable. He said — "I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all unto Me" (John xii. 32). 

152 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

There is no escape from the conclusion. If this 
statement of Christ's is true none will "perish 
everlastingly/' unless we commit ourselves to 
the inconsistency of supposing that some may 
be drawn to the Saviour, and yet remain perpetu- 
ally lost. 

"Are we, His Church, to water down what 
Jesus said?" asks our critic. Most certainly 
not; but at the same time, we are not so to 
mistranslate and misinterpret some of His utter- 
ances as to make them directly negative other 
of His utterances This has been done, for the 
sake of bolstering a dogma which outrages ev- 
ery true conception of Love, Justice and Mercy. 

A very few words will answer the critic's 
charge that my book — "Our Life After Death" 
— "leaves out the strong things Jesus Christ 
said." The statement is incorrect, as may be 
seen by reference to the book itself. The "strong 
things" spoken by Christ are quoted again and 
again throughout the work, and in particular, 
on page 240 and onwards, under the heading 
— "Passages referring to Future Punishments, 
as they appear in the Greek New Testament." 
No, it is not we who hold the Fuller Hope of 
Christ's Gospel, who "leave out" any of the 
"strong things" He said. It is true we strip 
His utterances of some of the Roman and Puri- 

153 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tanical significances subsequently imported into 
them, and translate His words in accordance 
with the original Greek. We minimize no state- 
ment made by Him, as to sin, its judgment and 
its consequences; and moreover, we take into 
our survey of Divine truth (as those who differ 
from us do not), those surpassingly stronger ut- 
terances of the Saviour and His Apostles, than 
any words of condemnation spoken by them — 
e. g. "The Son of Man is come to save that 
which was lost;" "I will draw all unto Me;" 
"The Times of the Restitution of all things;" 
"That God may be all in all" 

We find it impossible to think that our Lord 
and the men who received their teaching from 
Him, could have made exaggerated statements 
in regard to the final outcome of the saving 
Purpose of God. If the condemnatory pro- 
nouncements of the "Athanasian Creed" be 
true, the word "a//" in the passages just cited 
must be taken to mean no more than "some" 
Whether that is in harmony with our ideas of 
Christ as the Divine Teacher, we leave our read- 
ers to determine. 

NOTE. 
It is only right that I should mention that 
when I wrote to the Bishop of London, and 
pointed out to him that his statement that my 

154 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

book, "Our Life After Death," "leaves out the 
strong things that Jesus Christ said," was an in- 
accurate one, his Lordship replied — "It is a pity 
you went by the 'Church Times' report, which is 
so shortened as to be misleading. Here is the 
'Guardian* report, and when you read it, you will 
see that I go a long way with you. The only 
expression I regret is 'left out.' Those questions 
had only reached me a few minutes before, and 
therefore had to be answered at once. But what 
I meant by 'left out' was 'failed, in my opinion, to 
give adequate weight to.' It is here that you do 
not carry me with you. Nothing was farther 
from my thoughts than to misrepresent you in 
any possible way." The Bishop subsequently 
embodied this qualification of his criticism, in a 
public statement made at Kentish Town. 

In order to avoid any misrepresentation of the 
case, I append the following extracts from a work 
of his Lordship lately published — "A Mission of 
the Spirit" (Wells Gardner, Darton & Co.). It 
is the account of an important Mission in North 
London during Lent, 1906. 

On page 2.J of this work, the Bishop writes : — 
"The most serious question, in conclusion, is con- 
tained in two letters about the life after death. 
The writers have been reading a book which I 
know, but have not read myself for ten or fifteen 
years — 'Our Life After Death.' They say that 
the book has made a great impression upon them, 
and has been a comfort to them in many ways, 
and they ask what they are to believe about the 
life after death. As to that particular book, I 

155 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cannot say that I followed it in all its conclu- 
sions. What seemed to me to be left out — for it 
preached a kind of Universalism — were the 
strong things that Jesus Christ Himself said. It 
was He who used the strong language : it is not 
the Athanasian Creed ; that hymn repeats in nearly 
all its statements what is in the Bible. It is 
Jesus Christ's words that are the difficulty; and 
if He speaks about 'the worm that dieth not, and 
the fire that is not quenched,' and with tears in 
His voice entreats us to beware, who are we to 
water down what He says? And therefore, I 
would recommend you a book which I believe to 
be thoroughly sound, and which I have read to- 
day, called 'The Life of the Waiting Soul,' by 
Canon Sanderson. I would recommend this to 
the two questioners, and you will see there all 
the sound conclusions which there are in the 
other book, but it seems to me to be a more 
balanced statement of the truth." 

The other statement of his Lordship, in which 
he qualifies the foregoing is to be found on page 
132 of "A Mission of the Spirit." He writes : — 
"Here I will say that when I said that Mr. Cham- 
bers, who wrote a book called "Our Life After 
Death," leaves out the strong sayings of Jesus 
Christ Himself, I did not mean to say that he did 
not consider them, because he considered them 
very carefully, but I meant that in my opinion he 
did not lay sufficient stress upon them, although 
there is much in the book that I heartily agree 
with, and it is well worth reading." As it is pos- 
sible that some of the readers of the Bishop's 

156 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

book may see the first of his statements, and fail 
to see the second, it appears to me that a dam- 
aging public utterance, acknowledged to be inac- 
curate, and which was subsequently amended, 
should not have been re-published at all. Its 
embodiment within the book of a distinguished 
and honored man is likely to perpetuate the 
misrepresentation of my teaching. 



157 



II. I contend that the passage in Acts III. 21, 
"The Times of the Restitution (or Restoration) 
of all things," will not bear the construction you 
put upon it. The "all" only means a limited "all." 
Thus, "Whom (Christ) the Heaven must, indeed, 
receive until the Times of the Restoration of all 
things, of which things God spoke by the mouth 
of His holy prophets from of old." 

The "all" is limited by the words "of which." 
The passage then reads, "The Times of the Res- 
toration of all things of which God spoke," i. e. 
not of a universal "all." Consequently, this pas- 
sage does not support your view that evil will 
not be everlasting. 

I will pass over, in this place, the considera- 
tion of the impossibility of reconciling the 
thought of the everlasting continuance of Evil 
with the thought that God is loving, merciful, 
opposed to sin, and almighty. The idea is as 
inconsistent as would be the idea that the light 
of the sun is powerless to dispel the shadows 
of night, or that the waters of the ocean could 
not extinguish a blazing fire. 

We are shut up to one of two conclusions; 
either that there will be a Restoration of all 
things to God (which excludes the idea of per- 

158 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

petuated Evil); or that Evil will be everlasting, 
in spite of God's hating it, and being almighty. 

The questioner's point is, that the passage 
quoted above implies that not all, but only some, 
will be finally restored. "The 'all' is limited by 
the words 'of which/ " he states. But why may 
not the words "of which" (&v) refer to "the 
Times?" The passage would then read — "The 
Times of the Restoration of all, of which 
(Times) God spake," etc. If the statement was 
only intended to convey the meaning that the 
Restoration will include some, why, unnecessar- 
ily and misleading, use the word "all" ? 

The questioner's interpretation reduces the 
significance of the verse to this — the Restora- 
tion of certain particular things of which God 
spake. 

The Greek of the passage (a%pt> xp6va>v euro- 
Karao-rdo-eco? irdvr(ov y ctiv i\dXrjaev 6 #eo?) has 
been rendered in the Revised Version, as, "The 
Times of Restoration of all things, whereof God 
spake." The question, however, of what is 
the true meaning is set at rest by other Biblical 
statements, which define what shall be the char- 
acter of that "Restoration" of those Times to 
which the Apostle referred. 

Isaiah writes— "By Myself have I sworn, the 
word is gone forth from My mouth in right- 

159 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

eousness, and shall not return, that unto Me 
every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear" 
(Is. xlv. 23). 

Our Lord said — "Elijah indeed cometh, and 
shall restore all things" (Matt. xvii. 11). 

St. Paul wrote — "The creation itself also shall 
be delivered from the bondage of corruption 
into the liberty of the glory of the children of 
God" (Rom. viii. 21). In the next verse, he 
defines what he means by "creation;" he uses 
the phrase "the whole creation." 

If the contention of the questioner be right, 
these statements of Isaiah, our Lord and St. 
Paul must be labelled as extravagant and un- 
true. None can remain finally unrestored, if 
every knee is to bow to God, and every tongue 
is to swear to Him, and the whole creation is to 
be delivered from the bondage of Corruption. 



160 



III. You have no grounds for believing that all 
will ultimately be brought to God, from the 
words — "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive." (i Cor. xv. 22). The 
"all" is a limited "all." The limiting phrases are, 
"in Adam" and "in Christ." These are not co- 
extensive terms. The "all in Adam" means quite 
a different multitude from the "all in Christ." We 
are in Adam by natural birth; we become in 
Christ by new birth. That makes the "all" of the 
second clause a very different thing from a uni- 
versal "all," as you assert. 

Quite so; your interpretation and limitation 
of this passage most certainly do make a vast 
difference between the two "alls;" to the exal- 
tation of the power of Evil, and the deprecia- 
tion of the power of Christ. The old theological 
conception accords to Adam the power of evilly 
affecting the whole human race, and to Christ 
the power of blessing and saving some only of 
that same human race. All die in Adam; but 
not all, only some, will be made alive in Jesus. 
Is this compatible, we ask, with the statement 
of Him Who said — "I will draw all unto Me" 
(John xii. 32)? At the Consummation of the 
Divine Purpose, will the destroying and alienat- 
or 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ing force of Adam be found to be greater than 
the saving and drawing power of the Son of 
God ? If so, has not the Scripture assigned too 
much to Jesus, in declaring Him to be "the 
Saviour of all mankind; more especially of those 
that believe" (i Tim. iv. 10)? 

In that grandest of all St. Paul's Epistles — 
the Epistle to the Ephesians — the Apostle 
writes — "That in the dispensation of the fullness 
of the times, He might gather together, under 
one Head, all things in Christ, both those things 
which are in the heavens and those things which 
are upon the earth; even in Him" (Eph. i. 10). 
Here, we have a presentment in which the 
Christ is shown to be as co-extensively con- 
nected with the human race as was Adam. By 
reason of its relationship to Adam, that race 
became ruined and debased; by virtue of its re- 
lationship to Christ, it is ultimately to become 
restored and exalted. The terms "in Adam" 
and "in Christ" are in contrast. All, through 
the one, have been cursed; while all, through 
the Other, will be blessed. Adam stands as the 
Federal Head of the whole of humanity in re- 
gard to death; while Christ stands as the Fed- 
eral Head of that same whole in regard to life. 
To assert that the "all in Adam" must be read 
in the sense of the universal, while the "all in 

162 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Christ" must be taken only in the sense of the 
particular, is to make Christ less a Saviour than 
Adam was a Ruiner. According to this, Adam 
can exert an influence on the whole of mankind; 
Christ only on some. What is this, but to make 
the First Adam more powerful than the "Sec- 
ond Adam!" 

Again, St. Paul, in I Cor. xv. 28, states 
that, at "the end" (i. e. the end of those seons 
through which God will have been working out 
His great Purpose of salvation in Christ), He 
shall be "all things in all beings. 1 " If Christ will 
ultimately save only some, and not all, an in- 
superable barrier will be presented to the ful- 
fillment of that glorious prophecy; for it is in- 
conceivable to imagine God as being "all things" 
to irretrievably lost souls, and consequently, the 
Apostle's forecast would be wrong. 

Every soul to whom God is "all things" is a 
saved soul, and every soul drawn to Christ is a 
blessed soul, and therefore we contend that His 
saving work will ultimately embrace every hu- 
man creature, or His statement — "I will draw 
all unto Me," is untrue, and the statement of 
St. Paul also, to which we have just referred, 
is a glowing expectation never to be realized. 

"We are in Adam by natural birth; we be- 
come in Christ by new birth," states, the ques- 
ts 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tioner. We admit that; but what if the Purpose 
of God be that all shall ultimately become in 
Christ by new birth; that, after the punishment 
for sin, the pruning and the disciplining, all the 
lost sheep, the lost coins and the lost sons 
should be restored by Christ to the great All- 
Father ! 

That, surely, is a grander conception of the 
Gospel, than the one which pictures the Christ 
as unable to accomplish His mission as "the 
Saviour of all mankind!" 



164 



IV. In quoting St. Paul's words— "Who is the 
Saviour of all men" (i Tim. iv. 10), you omit 
the additional clause — "Specially of those that 
believe." In doing this you give a wrong meaning 
to his words. The word used by St. Paul is nox 
"Saviour," but "Preserver ;" for he adds "specially 
of believers." 

My omission of the clause — "specially of 
those that believe," is due to the fact that it 
was not required for the purpose of the argu- 
ment with which I was dealing. I was endeav- 
oring to show that those who deny that the 
whole human race will ultimately be saved, al- 
together ignore a great number of the state- 
ments of Scripture, which declare that this will 
be so. I cited St. Paul's words — "Who is the 
Saviour of all men" (among other equally as 
strong passages) in support of my assertion. 
There was no need for me to adduce the latter 
clause of the verse, as no question was raised 
as to God's being the Saviour "specially of be- 
lievers." That fact is admitted by all Chris- 
tians. 

The questioner attempts to destroy the all- 
embracive significance of this text, by substitut- 

165 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ing the word "Preserver" for "Saviour;" so 
making the passage mean that God is the Pre- 
server of the entire human race, and in an es- 
pecial sense of the believing section of it. He 
wishes to exclude the idea that God will save 
all men; but admits that He is the Preserver of 
all. 

But can He, we ask, with any consistency 
whatever, be called Humanity's Preserver, if 
multitudes are to be left forever in a condition 
of irreparable ruin and misery? We think not. 
We think that to describe God as the "Pre- 
server" of all men, is equally as strong a state- 
ment as to describe Him as the "Saviour" of all. 

There can be "no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning" in regard to God; hence, 
if He be the Preserver of all men now, He will 
be the Preserver of all men forever. If the old 
theological idea be right, that multitudes of 
human beings will "perish everlastingly," how 
will it be possible for God to be their Preserver? 
Thus, in denying the Final Restoration of all, 
we must deny to God this title of "Preserver of 
all men." 

The questioner asserts that the word used 
by St. Paul, in this verse, is not "Saviour," but 
"Preserver." The Greek word used in the text 
is traiTrjp (Soter). The primary meaning of 

166 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

that word is "Saviour," and its secondary sig- 
nificance — "Deliverer," "Preserver." 

We contend, therefore, that if it be not right 
to translate this word as "Saviour" in the pas- 
sage with which we are dealing, it cannot be 
right to so translate it in other passages of the 
New Testament. The questioner, by his line 
of reasoning, therefore robs Christ of that high- 
est title by which we love to think of Him; and 
Luke ii. n, must be read only as, "For unto 
you is born this day. ... a Preserver (o-corrjp) 
which is Christ the Lord," and i John iv. 14, 
as, "The Father sent the Son, the Preserver (not 
Saviour) of the world." 

And so on, in regard to a great number of 
passages in which this word acor^p is employed. 
In thus attempting to evade the force of St. 
Paul's statement, the position of Christ in re- 
gard to humanity is depreciated. 

With regard to the clause — "Specially of 
those that believe," in respect to its relation- 
ship to the antecedent clause — "the Saviour of 
all men," no difficulty presents itself to our 
mind. We believe that the great Purpose of 
God, in Christ, is ultimately to bring all human 
beings into union with Himself, that he may 
become "all in all" In this sense it is true to 

167 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

assert of Him that He is "the Saviour of all 
men." 

The assertion is not true, if salvation will not 
at length embrace the entire human race. God 
is specially the Saviour of "those that believe," 
for the reason that His saving work has already 
commenced in such, and their identification of 
themselves, in this life, with the Purpose of God 
will save them from many a painful and distress- 
ing experience in the Life Beyond, which will 
befall those who, like the Prodigal, turn their 
backs upon the Father, and only after suffering 
and shame, "come to themselves" and find their 
way to the Father's Bosom. It is because, in 
this sense, God is specially the Saviour of those 
that believe, that St. Paul wrote, "Behold, now 
is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of 
salvation" (2 Cor, vi. 2). 



168 



V. Do not the words — "Our God is a consum- 
ing Fire" (Heb. xii. 29) — conflict with the 
teaching that all will finally be restored? 

No; on the contrary, we regard this state- 
ment as being one of the strongest supports 
upon which we base our conviction that the 
Universalist position is right, and that the 
Bible's prediction of "the Restoration of all 
things" (Acts iii. 21) will be fulfilled. The 
ultimate elimination of evil from the universe 
seems to us to be guaranteed by the fact that 
God is "a consuming Fire." 

But what do we understand by this term? 

As applied to God, it can only, of course, 
have a figurative significance. It cannot denote 
that God is {ire, anymore than the words — "I 
am the Vine," and "I am the Door" — denote 
that Jesus is a tree or a piece of dead wood. 
The term signifies that there exists in God a 
Principle which can be likened to consuming 
fire. That implies the destruction, the burning 
up of something. 

Of what? The "Fire" of a God of supreme 
Goodness will, assuredly, not burn up anything 

169 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

but that which is evil and worthless. "He will 
gather His wheat into the garner; but He will 
burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire," said 
John the Baptist. 

The "chaff!" But the Theology of the past 
has got into a muddle, and created a host of 
Biblical difficulties for itself, by giving a wrong 
signification to the word "chaff." It has made 
the "chaff" symbolize men themselves, instead of 
the evil in men. 

God as "a consuming Fire" has been inter- 
preted for centuries to mean, that the Al- 
mighty will presently consign countless myr- 
iads of human souls to endless ruin and horror. 

This particular text is seized upon in support 
of his theory, alike by the upholder of the doc- 
trine of Everlasting Punishment, and also by 
the believer in the less revolting, but equally 
illogical, doctrine of the Annihilation of the 
wicked. 

The former's argument is that as "God is a 
consuming Fire," sinners will be consigned to 
the burnings of an everlasting Hell. The suf- 
fering, whether mental, or physical, or both, ac- 
cording to some, will be endless. 

Those who hold this appalling idea deny that 
the evil in the ones in Hell will be consumed. 
Necessarily so; they are cute enough to see that 

170 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

a perpetual Hell would be no suitable condition 
for any being ridded of evil. But they do not 
perceive the inconsistency of describing- as "con- 
suming" a Fire which leaves its victims uncon- 
sumed forever and ever. 

The Annihilationist is very much more con- 
sistent. He teaches that the "consuming Fire" 
will destroy the Sinner; that the man will be 
wiped out of existence. 

But what does this latter theory involve? 
Plainly this, the defeat of God, and that evil 
is strong enough to effectually frustrate forever 
God's Love and Purpose. 

God's Love! According to Christ, He "loved 
the world," i. e., all His human creatures in it. 
God's Purpose! The salvation of all. His 
Christ was declared to be "the Saviour of all 
men," and "the Lamb of God which taketh 
away the Sin of the world." 

Yet, according to the Annihilationist, God's 
Purpose will never be fulfilled, and His Love 
for untold numbers of the race He loves will 
come to an abrupt ending. We are told He 
will stamp out the evil in millions by sweeping 
them into nonentity. Is He not "a consuming 
Fire"? it is asked. 

Surely a strange way of bringing about "the 
Restoration of all things," and of justifying 

171 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Christ in saying He would "draw all men" to 
Himself! 

Will God deal with His evil-stricken beings 
as we deal with our plague-infected cattle — kill 
them to get rid of the disease? Is this compati- 
ble with the thought of Divine Love and Al- 
mightiness? 

And yet this, and far worse than this, has 
been taught, and is even now being taught, by 
some who have read this text in the lurid light 
of a narrow theology. Thank God! the world 
is fast moving on to worthier conceptions of 
God. Men are refusing to allow any longer their 
minds and their moral instincts to be enslaved 
by the traditions of the past. 

The Gospel, as the Universalist understands 
it, presents none of these difficulties to faith and 
none of these shocks to reason and the moral 
perceptions. 

Our God is "a consuming Fire," we say, be- 
cause of His Love. That "Fire" will "burn up" 
the evil — the "chaff" in human souls, just be- 
cause He loves those souls. All souls are God's, 
and no soul in this world, or in any other world, 
to whatever extent it may be a "lost" thing, can 
be beyond the radius of the Love of the Father. 
The "lost piece of money" comes from the royal 
Mint of Heaven, and although it may have 

172 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

rolled away into the dust and defilement of evil, 
and become a rusted and tarnished thing, with 
the superscription of the Divine on it all but 
obliterated, it still belongs to God. He has 
handed over nothing which is His to a Devil. 
That evil-defiled soul is still loved by Him. The 
mission and work of His Son is "to seek and to 
save" the lost things, and on the showing of the 
Christ Himself that mission will never be ac- 
complished until the last of the "lost" shall have 
been found, and restored to the Father. 

It is the evil in men and women which makes 
them "lost" souls; and God hates that evil; not 
them. Evil is selfishness, and selfishness is the 
antithesis of Love. It interposes a barrier be- 
tween God and the objects of His Love. It 
thwarts for a while the purposes of that Love. 
His "Fire" will consume it. By His judgments, 
by His disciplinings in this world and the next, 
by the very hells which men make for them- 
selves, God will "burn up" the evil in them. 
Thus, the very judgments of God become the 
pledges of His Love; and thus, a passage of 
Scripture which has been supposed to confirm 
the idea of unending doom and horror for the 
greater part of the human race, becomes to us, 
in the light of Universalism, a message from 
God which scares away the awful shadows that 

173 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

men have flung on the Being of the Father, and 
lifts us to infinite hope. 

In the light of such thoughts, how luminous 
become the words of the Psalmist — "I have 
hoped in Thy judgments" (Ps. cxix. 43) ! 



174 



VI. In your book— "Our Life After Death"— 
you contend that the word alcovio? (aionios) will 
not sustain the meaning of "everlasting." What 
other Greek word could the New Testament writ- 
ers have used to express that meaning? 

This question, which is submitted by a cler- 
gyman, is a very important one, for the reason 
that if this word alcbvios does mean "everlast- 
ing," and there are no other terms in the Greek 
language to convey the idea, then that greatest 
and most awful of all doctrinal errors — the 
dogma of unending woe — finds a support, as far 
as the letter of Scripture is concerned. 

But, fortunately for the chance of doing away 
with this great stumbling-block to the Christian 
Religion, and of dispelling a grim and terrible 
shadow which has bedimmed men's vision of 
God and His Purpose — this is not so. The 
doctrine of unending woe is in opposition to the 
letter of the Bible, no less than to the enlight- 
ened moral instincts of mankind to-day. It is 
still held by some, but it is as an article of 
credulity, rather than as an article of faith. It 
is an ugly thing — a skeleton in the theological 

175 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cupboard, which must not be brought into the 
light of day. It is a doctrine which must not 
be thought about, talked about, and argued 
about. It begins to disintegrate and to disap- 
pear from the region of the real and the true 
directly it is discussed. The only chance of re- 
taining it as a belief, and of still remaining a 
God-honoring, loving and unselfish Christian, 
is not to face it and not to attempt to justify it. 
It cannot, without horror and doubt, be faced 
by any whose mental powers have not in regard 
to Divine love and justice been anaesthetized; 
and its justification is impossible. 

Now, there will be no need for me, in this 
answer, to substantiate the assertion that the 
word al&vm does not denote the idea of ever- 
lastingness. 

The reader will find this point carefully and 
fully dealt with on pages 222-233 oi the book — 
"Our Life After Death." The word is an ad- 
jective derived from a noun (alcbv — awn). This 
latter word signifies an age — an age which may 
be long or short; but which, however long, is 
terminable. It is never in the Bible, or else- 
where, used to denote endlessness. Ala>vio<; 
its adjective, therefore means "age-long," or 
"that pertaining to an age or epoch;" and noth- 
ing more. There cannot be predicated of an 

176 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

adjective more than is predicated of the noun 
from which it is derived. 

The questioner asks — "What other Greek 
word could have been used (in place of this 
alcbvio?) to denote everlastingness ? 

There is the word aei y an adverb — ever, al- 
ways, forever. With the article, this word was 
used to express unendingness; e. g. 6 ael xpovos 
(the unending time; i. e. eternity); ol ael 6We? 
(those existing forever; i. e. the immortals). 
Moreover, this word aei, conjoined with other 
words, imports into the latter the idea of non- 
ending. Thus, aei-P\a<TTr)<s — ever-budding; 
aet-fipvrjs — ever-sprouting; aei-yevecria — 
perpetual generation; and so on. 

The Translators have rendered our Lord's 
words, in Matt. xxv. 46 aireXeixrovTai olroi 
els KoXaa-tv alwviov) as, "These shall go away 
into everlasting punishment." The true render- 
ing is — "These shall go away into an age-long 
pruning" A vast difference, surely! Why did 
our Lord, had He meant what the Translators 
stated, not say, "These shall go away et5 ttjv 
ael Bi/erjaiv" (into the unending vengeance, or 
punishment)? There could have been, in that 
case, no question as to the signification of His 
utterance. And we have to remember that 
what has just been stated in regard to this par- 

177 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ticular passage, applies to all those passages in 
which the word alcbvios has been mistranslated, 
in order to make it bolster an erroneous and 
pernicious theological idea. 

But there is another Greek word which the 
writers of the New Testament could have used 
to convey the sense of unendingness; and as a 
matter of fact it has been used by them for that 
purpose. I refer to the word athios. It is an 
adjective derived from aeC\ and consequently 
there can be no question as to its signification 
being "everlasting." St. Paul, in Romans i. 20 
uses the word in reference to God — 77 cdhos 
avTov Svvafiis ical Oeior^, the translation of 
which is given in the Revised Version as "His 
everlasting power and divinity.'' This word 
atScos was commonly employed by the Greek 
writers; thus, efc athov — forever, while rj ai'Sio? 
ovcrta (that which exists everlastingly) was a 
phrase employed to denote Eternity. Moreover, 
the noun formed from this word — alSiorr)? — is 
the Greek word for "Eternity." 

The New Testament writers, therefore, could 
have used this word atBios instead of atcbvioq, 
had it been their intention to convey the idea 
of unendingness. St. Paul did intend to convey 
that idea when he referred to God's "power and 
divinity;" and consequently employed the word. 

178 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

We can only suppose that the writers who used 
the word alwvios (a word which is used hun- 
dreds of times in the Bible in the sense of ter- 
minableness) did not mean unendingness there- 
by. If, as the Theology of the past has asserted, 
they did mean that, then why, we ask, select a 
word open to doubt, when other words, whose 
signification is unquestioned, were available for 
their purpose? Reverting to the passage we 
have already quoted — "These shall go away into 
everlasting punishment," it would have been per- 
fectly easy to convey that awful significance by 
the phrase efe athov Si/crjcnv. Thus we see that 
other words were available to convey the idea 
of everlastingness. 

A difficulty which presents itself to those who 
have not sufficiently studied this subject, has 
been dealt with on pages 271-275 of "Our Life 
After Death." Briefly stated, it is this: "If the 
word aloavios does not mean 'everlasting' or 
'eternal' in regard to punishment, then neither 
does it in regard to reward and blessedness; 
seeing that the same word is used in reference 
to the righteous — 'The righeous shall go eh 
Zcorjv aldaviav (into an age-long life)' What 
basis have we for a belief in everlasting life, if 
in this and similar passages in the New Testa- 

179 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ment only an ceonial or age-long life is prom- 
ised ?" 

Our Saviour Christ in His reiterated prom- 
ises as to this aeonial-life, and the writers of the 
Epistles in their constant reference to the same 
thing, were focussing their mental gaze upon 
that great Epoch which St. Paul, in Eph. iii. 21 
describes as "the 2Eon of the aeons;" a par- 
ticular ^Eon, the great ^Eon, the consummat- 
ing Age of all the ages, the Age whose closing 
shall see the fulfilment of God's "Purpose of 
the aeons" (Eph iii. 11), viz. the "Restitution 
of all things." It will be an iEon of blessed- 
ness and of perfected being and life to those in 
affinity and union with Christ. "I give unto 
them this /Eonial (al&vios) life," said He. But 
this ^Eon of blessedness and perfected life for 
the righteous will include its epochs of pruning 
and disciplining and even spiritual death for the 
unrighteous. Though it will be a terminable 
period, it will be a vast one, as is indicated by 
St. Paul's words — "all the generations of the 
^Eon of the aeons" (Eph iii. 21); and Christ 
spoke of "aeonial pruning" and "aeonial death." 
This great JEon will close only when the great 
Purpose of God in Christ shall have been ac- 
complished; when the epochs of pruning and 
death shall have passed away, and the last "lost" 

180 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

and "dead" beings shall have been found and 
made alive to God. To those who pass into 
that great ^Lon, identified with Christ, it will 
mean an aeon of enhanced and superabundant 
life; a life which will place the participators of 
it beyond the reach of asonial disciplining or 
seonial death. That is what our Lord meant, 
when He said — "If a man keep My w r ord, he 
shall not see death all through the JEon" (els rov 
al(Dva) John viii. 51. 

It may be asked — If that great iEon will 
close, will not the life and blessedness of that 
^Eon also come to an end? Nay, that cannot 
be. Like a mighty river which has gathered 
the waters from the smaller rivers and brook- 
lets, and then discharges itself into the great 
ocean, so the "^Eon of the aeons" will merge 
into Eternity; and the life pertaining to that 
i?Eon, because it is God-life and Christ-life, will 
last forever. 

Not, then, upon the promise of Jesus to give 
us the blessing of the iEonial life (grand as that 
promise is) do we base our hope of immortal- 
ity; but upon the fact that linked with Him we 
are linked with God. The God-life will be in 
us, and that can know no ending. "Because / 
live," said Jesus, "ye shall live also" (John xiv. 

I9 ). 

181 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

What has been said will be sufficient to show 
how superficial is the argument, that, in reject- 
ing "everlasting" as the translation of the word 
al<bvio<; we demolish not only the awful doc- 
trine of everlasting loss and misery, but also 
that of everlasting life and blessedness. 

We should consider ourselves as being in a 
pitiable plight, had we to build our hope of im- 
mortality only on a word (clIcovlos) which has 
been applied to the doors of a temple no longer 
in existence (Ps. xxiv. 7); to a certain order 
of priesthood (the Aaronic), which has long 
since passed away; and to conditions of social 
and national life that have ceased to be. 



182 



VII. Is there a danger, in regard to the Uni- 
versalist belief, of making the Benevolence of 
God dominate His Holiness and Justice in such 
a way as to constitute Him the Tolerator of evil? 

This is the form in which the question has 
been submitted; and although it is based on 
wholly illogical assumptions, it represents one 
of the most common, as well as easily-disposed 
of, objections which are urged against the view 
contained in the Bible — viz., that ultimately 
God will be "all in all." 

Two false propositions are implied in the 
question — 

(a) That the Benevolence of God could only 
compass the final salvation of all men, at the 
cost of lowering the claims of Divine Holiness 
and Justice. 

(b) That God in finally saving all would be 
tolerating evil. 

These are, assuredly, startlingly strange con- 
clusions ! Let us examine them. 

First, with respect to the Benevolence — i. e., 
the Goodwill, the Love, of God. The question 
pre-supposes that there may be a danger of un- 

183 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

duly exalting that. It is feared that God's Love 
may be assigned too predominant a position in 
regard to other attributes which pertain to Him. 
That if the Love of God be accounted too great, 
His Holiness and Justice may be reckoned as 
too little. But can we, we ask, over-estimate 
the Benevolence or Love of God? In the face 
of what Jesus and the writers of the New Tes- 
tament said, we should have thought it impos- 
sible to do this. Christ represented God as lov- 
ing all — "the world;" as being benevolent to 
"the evil and the good," to "the just and the 
unjust." 

St. Paul wrote that he was persuaded "that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princi- 
palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other created thing, shall be able to separate us 
from the love of God." St. John, whose Epistles 
are saturated through and through with the 
thought of God's Love, reached the highest 
point of Divine Truth, when in his definition of 
God he wrote — "God is Love" (i John iv. 8). 

If this declaration of the Apostle is true, it 
follows that Love lies as the essential Principle 
of the Being of God, and consequently must not 
only dominate all those other attributes and 
qualities and powers which go to make up the 

184 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

perfection of the Godhead, but is the root from 
which they all spring. Thus Love determines 
all that God is and all that God does. Is He 
holy, and hates sin and loves goodness? It is 
because He is Love. Is He just, and will re- 
ward the righteous and punish the wicked? It 
is because He is Love. Does He extend His 
pity and mercy and pardon? It is because He 
is Love. Is He "a Consuming Fire" that by 
judgment and discipline will "burn up the chaff" 
in men? It is because He is Love. 

Thus, so far from agreeing with the ques- 
tioner, that the Benevolence or Love of God 
must not be made to dominate His Holiness 
and Justice, we assert, on the authority of the 
Scriptures, that it does dominate both; and that 
neither of those qualities in God will be rightly 
understood by us, until we realize that they are 
the offspring of the Parent-Principle of Divine 
Love. God Who is holy, is not Holiness; it is 
but a characteristic of Him: and God Who is 
just, is not Justice; that, too, is but a character- 
istic of Him: but God Who is loving, is Love; 
and therein is to be found the key which will 
enable us to unlock the door of Truth in regard 
to His purpose of salvation in Christ. 

Now, it is owing to men having failed to per- 
ceive that the Love of God must dominate and 

185 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

determine the exercise of all other qualities 
resident in Him, that has given rise in the past 
to those doctrines which have so misrepresented 
and disfigured the Religion of Jesus. I refer 
to the doctrines of Predestination and Everlast- 
ing Punishment. The former represents the 
Love of God as exercising itself only in the di- 
rection of a certain selected and privileged few; 
making all others not only of no concern to God 
in view of salvation, but even the objects of His 
hatred. It was an idea which commended itself 
to the narrow and exclusive mind of the ancient 
Jew, and found expression in those words cited 
by St. Paul, — who shows in his Epistle to the 
Romans a bias towards Rabbinical thought — 
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord. 
Yet I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated' 1 (Mai. i. 
2 and 3). This is not the representation of 
the Love of God, as made by Jesus and by St. 
John, or even by St. Paul himself, after he had 
advanced to the full understanding of the Gos- 
pel of Christ. 

The doctrine of Everlasting Punishment ex- 
cludes, of course, all thought of God's loving the 
wretched beings who will suffer that experience. 
The good earthly father may love his son, 
though he punish him for his wrong-doing. But 
that is because the punishment is viewed as 

186 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

remedial. It is a means adopted by the father for 
bringing his child into accord with himself and 
his love. But no such thought lies behind the 
idea of God's infliction of everlasting punish- 
ment upon His creatures. It is not an infliction 
of Love, but of awful and unmitigated wrath, 
we are told. It contemplates no betterment and 
no recovery of the victims. It is a final and 
irreversible act of Divine vengeance. Thus, 
the School which has propagated this teaching, 
has made what has been regarded as the Holi- 
ness and Justice of God to so dominate His 
Love, as to cause the latter to disappear alto- 
gether in regard to an enormous section of the 
race. 

In reference to both these horrible dogmas, 
we ask — How can all the theological ingenuity 
in the world make them to harmonize with the 
statement of Christ that God loves all, and with 
that still more penetrative statement of St. John, 
that "God is Love"? 

When will the Christian world understand 
that the Election we read of in the Bible is not 
the Predestination of the Calvinist; nor is the 
Hell of which Jesus spoke the Hell of Medise- 
valism and Protestant Theology? 

Such doctrines as these outrage the idea of 
Love. If countless millions of human souls are 

187 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

never in this world or Beyond to feel the mov- 
ings of Divine grace, because the All-Father 
never intended that they should do so; if it be 
true that men will ''without doubt, perish ever- 
lastingly, and go into everlasting fire," then 
alas! for the thought of God's Love. These 
things, if facts, would mean the disappearance 
of the Sun of the universe behind such lurid 
cloud-banks of horror and despair, as it would 
baffle the mind of man to conceive. 

It may be asked, how could such dogmas as 
these have even been accepted by men who ac- 
counted as true the words of St. John — that 
"God is Love"? 

It was in consequence of mentally placing 
God's attributes of Holiness and Justice out of 
all true proportion to His main great attribute 
— Love. Those who have taught these doc- 
trines,- instead of accounting God's Love as 
dominating His other qualities, have accounted 
His Sovereignty, Holiness, Justice and Power 
as controlling, restricting and even extinguish- 
ing His Love. 

So in answer to the objection against the 
Universalist belief, as to the danger of making 
the Benevolence or Love of God dominate His 
Holiness and Justice, — we reply, that that which 
some are pleased to call "a danger," we account 

188 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

as the most glorious fact pertaining to the Gos- 
pel of Christ; and that if what the believers in 
Everlasting Punishment teach were true — viz., 
that God's Holiness and Justice dominate His Love 
— it would be a catastrophe to the human race. 
There would be no salvation. 

But there is another point in connection with 
the question which demands attention. It is 
that which implies the possibility of under-esti- 
mating the claims of Divine Holiness and Jus- 
tice. The Universalist is charged by those who 
believe in the doctrine of Everlasting Punish- 
ment and Loss, with exalting the Love of God 
at the expense of His Holiness and Justice. It 
is alleged that not all men will be saved — in spite 
of that promise of Jesus to "draw all ,f to Him- 
self — because it would be incompatible with the 
fact that God is holy and just. Those who ac- 
cept this view adduce, as the main-prop of it, 
the argument that Divine Holiness and Justice 
demand the irretrievable ruin and misery of hu- 
man souls; and that were the Love of God to 
avert this, the claims of Holiness and Justice 
would not be satisfied. 

It is a terrible thought to suppose that two 
great qualities, which go to make up the per- 
fection of God, should ever have been regarded 
as the cause why countless millions of the 

189 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

creatures He called into being must suffer for- 
ever and ever. But, thank God! the thought 
is as illogical, as it is dishonoring to Him Who 
is Love. Thank God! it is but that which a 
great pioneer of "Larger Hope" — the late Dean 
Farrar — once described it as being — "an ebul- 
lient flash from the glowing caldron of men's 
heated and perverted imaginations. ,, It has 
arisen from an altogether untrue and exagger- 
ated notion of what constitutes Divine Holiness 
and Justice. 

We submit that the idea of creatures remain- 
ing forever in a condition of ruin and alienation, 
is completely subversive of any true conception of 
God's Holiness and Justice. 

The Holiness of God must presuppose God's 
hatred of and hostility to sin. "Thou art of 
purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not 
look on iniquity," wrote the old-world Seer, 
Habakkuk. He did not, of course, mean that 
God was unconscious of the existence of evil. 
He could only have meant that it is impossible 
for God to look with complacency and tolera- 
tion on it. It is this antagonism of God's Holi- 
ness to evil which constitutes the raison d J etre of 
His Purpose of saving the human race through 
Christ. "For this purpose the Son of God was 

190 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

manifested, that He might destroy the works of 
the devil" (i John iii. 8). 

But, we ask, does not the acceptance of this 
doctrine that some — the great majority, ac- 
cording to the old Theology — will suffer ever- 
lastingly, involve the consequence that the Holi- 
ness of God will never be satisfied ? God's Holi- 
ness desires the abolition of evil — does it not? 
But everlasting punishment involves the ever- 
lasting perpetuation of evil. Those who went 
into an unending Hell would remain unendingly 
evil; since to conceive of God's perpetually pun- 
ishing souls who had ceased to be evil, would be 
blasphemy. What, then, is the corollary? That 
if beings are to be punished everlastingly, evil 
will remain, and He Who is of purer eyes than 
to complacently behold sin, must contemplate it 
forever and ever. 

Which, we ask, is the more reasonable belief, 
and more consonant with the thought of Divine 
Holiness — that embodied in the Mediaeval no- 
tion, that sin has the potency of everlastingness; 
or that of the Universalist, who believes that 
sin will be finally annihilated, because God hates 
it, and God is supreme? 

As I write these words, I am reminded of an 
incident which took place at a gathering of 
clergy whom I was addressing on this subject. 

191 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

One of them — a representative of the old school 
of thought — was so piously shocked at the idea 
of God's Purpose embracing any but the few, 
that he said to me — "I suppose, Sir, you would 
tell us next that the Devil himself might be 
finally saved." My reply was — "That, I think, 
is not improbable, if the Bible is true; for if you 
believe that the Devil is an immortal being, 
and that God will one day be (as St. Paul as- 
serts) 'all things in all beings,' then it seems 
very unreasonable to suppose that the Holiness 
of God will tolerate immortal evil, even in the 
Devil." 

We turn now to the subject of Divine Justice. 
The opposers of the Universalist belief allege 
that the Justice of God calls for the endless suf- 
fering and ruin of those who depart this life not 
in a state of salvation. 

The stock argument is, that sin, being an of- 
fence against an Infinite God, is in itself an 
infinite offence, and therefore demands an infinite 
punishment. This line of reasoning is accepted 
by some as being very profound and conclusive. 
It is really inconclusive, and very illogical. 

We grant, of course, that sin is an offence — 
a very great offence — against an Infinite God; 
but that does not constitute sin as being infi- 
nite. How, in the nature of things, can it pos- 

192 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

sibly be so? The person who sins is a -finite 
being — how can he wield a power which pre- 
supposes infinitude ? How can his action be an 
infinite one? Sin is not invested with infinitude 
on account of its being an action directed 
against an Infinite God. Unlike Goodness, sin 
is not an infinite and indestructible Principle. 

Goodness is of God; while sin is not of Him. 
We rightly predicate of God infinitude, and we 
may predicate of Goodness the same thing, be- 
cause it is of Him. But we wrongly predicate 
of sin infinitude; for sin is not of God, and con- 
sequently lacks this characteristic of the Divine. 

The idea of evil as a Principle which is infi- 
nite, i. e., boundless, endless, is not in accord- 
ance with the teaching of Christ. It is an im- 
portation into Christian Theology of the old 
Eastern Dualistic notion of rival gods, or rival 
Principles, contending for the supremacy of the 
universe. 

No; sin is a dislocation, a disarrangement 
which has taken place in the Eternal Order of 
the universe; a discord which has been struck 
in the orchestra of Divine Harmony, by beings 
who have wrongly used God's grandest gift of 
Will; but sin is no blighting curse which must 
remain forever, no awful shadow which can 
never be lifted, no everlasting reproach to God 

193 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

for making man as man. Thus, it seems to us 
that the very Justice of God to Himself and to 
the universe over which He must reign su- 
preme, demands the final abolition of evil. 

On the other hand, the thought of Everlast- 
ing Punishment outrages every true conception 
of Justice. The ones who talk so glibly and 
complacently about an endless Hell, but little 
realize what it means. It is a mercy that this 
is so; for if all the Christians who profess to be- 
lieve this doctrine really believed it, suicide 
would be rife and our mad-houses full. The 
doctrine is accepted without any appreciation of 
its awful import. I give as an instance of this, 
a remark made by one of the Congregation to 
whom I was preaching. I had been speaking of 
the "Larger Hope." After the service, this 
gentleman was heard to say — "I don't agree 
with the preacher. I was always brought up 
to believe in everlasting Hell-fire; it was good 
enough for my forefathers, and it ought to be 
good enough for me" 

If the remark had been made to me, I should 
have replied, that although this terrible concep- 
tion of an unenlightened age may have been 
good enough for his forefathers, and may be 
good enough for him, it is not good enough for 

194 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

God, in view of Divine Love, Holiness and Jus- 
tice. 

It can produce no love of God in a human 
soul. How can it ? Does the child love the par- 
ent whose principle is to punish, not in order 
to correct and bless, but to ruin and curse? 
There are those who assent to this doctrine, and 
still love and trust God in spite of it. But they 
can only do so by thrusting this article of their 
Creed into the background of their conscious- 
ness. They put the ugly thought away in one 
of the dark cupboards of the mind; and there 
the fearsome mummy remains as the bugbear 
of their faith, until God lets in the light and air 
of Truth, and the ugly thing crumbles into dis- 
solution, and is buried with the mental errors of 
the past. 

And further, this Mediaeval conception of Fu- 
ture Punishment is not accepted by the intelli- 
gent thought of the present age; and unless the 
Church of Christ can show that the Gospel of 
Jesus demands no such belief, men will betake 
themselves for spiritual guidance and comfort 
to other systems of Religion. As a matter of 
fact, many are doing so; and the fault lies with 
those teachers who take the limits of the ideas 
of men in the past as the standard of truth for 
men of to-day. 

195 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

In the light of advancing knowledge, and 
with the growth of the Christ-like and humane 
instincts, men cannot, and will not, believe that 
for offences committed against a God of Infinite 
Love and Holiness, during a brief earth-life, 
souls will be hurled into unending woe and ir- 
retrievable ruin. 

There is no Justice of God in such a thought. 
Rather, is it an imputing to God of an implaca- 
bility and an insensibility to suffering, as would 
amount to a slander, if alleged against the 
humblest Christian. Let it not be thought that 
we minimize the gravity of sin, or that we deny 
the fearful and awful consequences to those who 
wilfully persist in it. That is one of the favor- 
ite misrepresentations of the Universalist belief. 
We do nothing of the kind. We simply declare 
that the Justice of God — to say nothing of His 
Love — points not to the everlasting conserva- 
tion of evil, but to its extinguishment, and also 
to the final abolition of the Hell into which it 
may plunge sinners — when the dark shadow of 
evil shall have been lifted from God's vast em- 
pire, and "the former things — all that is not of 
God — shall have passed away." 

There is one other point connected with the 
question which remains to be noticed. It is that 
which sees a danger in the Universalist belief 

196 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of accounting God as the Tolerator of evil. God, 
we are told, were He not to punish men ever- 
lastingly for their sins, but were, ultimately, by 
His judgments to deliver them from the power 
and consequences of sin, would thereby be tol- 
erating evil. But why? Does anyone suppose 
that a judge is tolerating evil, who sentences a 
sheep-stealer to imprisonment with the possibil- 
ity of amendment, instead of to capital punish- 
ment? That old savage law of the land, which 
set a greater value on property than on life, 
was seen to be inimical to Justice, and it was 
abolished. But the State is not accounted the 
Tolerator of the crime of sheep-stealing in con- 
sequence. Nor will the consistent thinker 
imagine that the God of Love is less opposed to 
sin, because He does not consign the sinner to 
unavailing misery forever. Did not the Christ 
say — "The Son of Man is not come to destroy 
men's lives, but to save?" 

And lastly, it is not the teaching of the Uni- 
versalist, but that of those who differ from him, 
which presents God as the Tolerator of evil. 
What could constitute a greater toleration of 
evil, than that sinners are never to be saved, 
and that sin is to remain throughout the rolling 
aeons of Eternity a deathless Power, which even 
Omnipotence Himself cannot extinguish! 

197 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

What, we ask again, can be more in harmony 
with the thought that God is non-tolerant in re- 
gard to evil, than that belief, which by the eye 
of faith sees the great accomplishment of the 
Mission of Christ — the drawing of all to Him- 
self! 



198 



VIII. Is it right for me to pray for a dear de- 
parted one, who did not accept the commonly 
taught views concerning the Christian Faith? If 
so, what kind of prayer could I use? 

This is a question put by a devout Christian 
lady, whose grief at the loss of her husband was 
terribly accentuated by her belief that the con- 
dition and destiny of every soul is determined 
for eternity at death. The great obstacle to 
her acceptance of the Gospel of Hope and Com- 
fort was that misinterpreted text — "In the place 
where the tree falleth, there it shall be" (Eccles. 
xi. 3). She had been taught to think that 
these words excluded all possibility of enlight- 
enment rand salvation beyond the grave. 

Let us, in passing, consider this passage. In 
the first place, it is the utterance of a man who 
lived "in the twilight of Divine revelation;" who 
was not morally exemplary; and who, at times, 
was ultra-pessimistic. It seems to us extraordi- 
nary that the statement of such a person should 
have constituted the main-prop of a theory 

199 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

which shuts the door of hope against at least 
nine-tenths of the human race. Yet so it is. 
The glorious words of Christ concerning "lost" 
ones, and the statements of those after Him 
who reflected the truth as taught by Him, have 
been stripped of their far-reaching significance, 
because of that saying of this man of "the twi- 
light." Theology, in the past, has placed the 
utterances of Solomon on the same level of in- 
spiration as the utterances of Jesus and His 
Apostles. 

In the next place, we do not believe that Sol- 
omon, in making this assertion, had the slight- 
est idea that he was saying anything which af- 
ter-ages would construe into a Divine declara- 
tion that there can be no salvation after death. 
The context of the passage makes it very ques- 
tionable whether he was thinking at all about 
future existence. But even if he had been think- 
ing of that; even if he had imagined that the 
Love and Purpose of God were so circum- 
scribed as not to be able to operate in regard 
to humanity beyond the earth-life — what of 
that? Surely, nothing that Solomon or any of 
the Old Testament writers may have said is to 
be accepted as truth, if it be in conflict with 
the teaching of Jesus. 

The New Testament abounds in statements 

200 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

which flatly contradict this utterance of Solo- 
mon. ''There can be no recovery, no salvation 
after death," say some; "the words of Solomon 
exclude that hope." We reply — "Very well; 
but to what does this commit us?" The vast 
majority who pass out of this life are certainly 
not at the time saved souls. Was Christ wrong 
in prophesying that He would draw all men to 
Himself? That prophecy will never be fulfilled, 
if the myriads who are undrawn at death are 
not drawn afterwards. Again, St. Paul pre- 
dicted a time when God shall be "all in all" Was 
he, too, wrong? God can never be more than 
"all" in some, unless His work of saving is con- 
tinued after death. 

But the greatest disproof, perhaps, of the in- 
terpretation put upon Solomon's statement is to 
be found in that fact recorded in i Peter iii. 
18-20; and iv. 6. The Apostle distinctly de- 
clares that salvation after death is possible. He 
asserts that a crowd of old-world sinners who 
had physically perished in the Flood, had been 
brought by God's disciplining in the spirit-life 
to a condition which was no longer "dis- 
obedient;" and that to them, when morally and 
spiritually attuned to receive Divine enlighten- 
ment and grace, the discarnate Jesus "went and 
preached His Gospel" that they might "live ac- 

201 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cording to God in the spirit." We ask, Which 
statement are we to take — that of St. Peter, or 
that of Solomon? If Solomon's words exclude 
all hope of salvation after death, as the old 
Theology has said, then St. Peter was mistaken. 
The discarnate Christ did not preach the Good 
Tidings (evrjyyeXto-drj) to the ones who in 
earth-life had been disobedient, because the res- 
toration of them (according to some) is impos- 
sible. 

The old Theology has taken this passage of 
Scripture concerning "Christ's preaching to the 
spirits in keeping," and has brought every con- 
ceivable learned device to bear upon it, in order 
to obscure its plain and natural meaning, and 
make it fit in with what Solomon said. It does 
not see, however, that the denial of the post 
mortem salvation of mankind, involves the 
labelling of hundreds of the utterances of the 
Christ and the New Testament writers as ex- 
aggerated, incapable of fulfillment and, there- 
fore, untrue. What we have said may, perhaps, 
"clear the ground" for the answer to the ques- 
tion with which we are dealing. 

Is it right to pray for the Departed who do 
not leave this life in the Christian Faith? 

The attitude of the Christian community with 
regard to Prayer for the Departed is a curious 

202 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

and an anomalous one. One great section of 
Christendom — including the Roman Catholic 
Church and a large and influential Party in the 
Anglican Church, maintains that it is a Chris- 
tian duty to pray for those who have gone 
hence; but considers that such prayer should be 
restricted to the "Faithful Departed." On the 
other hand, a great section of believers, com- 
prising what is curiously termed the "Evangeli- 
cal" School (as if their particular tenets con- 
stituted the only true presentment of Gospel 
truth), views with disapproval, and even horror, 
all prayers for believers or unbelievers after 
death. So Christendom is divided on this point. 
We agree with neither Body. Both, in our 
opinion, are attaching more weight to the ut- 
terance of Solomon, than to the teachings of 
Christ and His Apostles. 

This is what we mean. The Romanist and 
the High-Anglican believe — and rightly so — 
that as no one departs this life with his mental, 
moral and spiritual being fully developed, a con- 
tinued work of Divine grace will be necessary 
after death, before the goal of salvation — per- 
fection — can be reached. They consider — and 
rightly so — that physical death will work no 
miracle of spiritual transformation, nor will it 
constitute the imperfect saint on earth a being 

203 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

without imperfection in spirit-life. They admit 
that the person most advanced in Christ-like 
character at the time of dying, has still to scale 
many a height of moral and spiritual excellence, 
before he can touch the point of resemblance to 
the "perfect man — unto the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ." They believe, 
moreover, that the prayers of us on earth will 
help on these souls Beyond, just as, in this life, 
the prayers of Christians are uplifting influences 
on others. And so, in accordance with the 
Christian and sensible idea embodied in the ar- 
ticle of the Apostles' Creed — "the Communion 
of Saints," they pray for the Faithful Departed. 
We are in entire accord with them up to this 
point. Let us keep an "All Souls' Day" by all 
means. It will do us a world of good to set 
aside a day in the year on which to fix our 
thoughts on the eternal interests of others, 
rather than on our own personal advantages in 
regard to salvation. Only let us be consistent. 
Do not let us call it the Day of "All Souls" 
when we mean only some souls; only those who 
are "in the state of salvation." And, moreover, 
do not let us express our faith in the possibili- 
ties of advancement Beyond, by adopting a black 
ceremonialism which is suggestive of Pagan un- 
belief and hopelessness. 

204 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

The Romanist and the High-Anglican have 
nothing to say in respect to praying for the non- 
Faithful Departed. They look very "sideways" 
at the mere suggestion of it. Without their 
perceiving it, the old interpretation affixed to 
the words of Solomon is influencing them. As 
far as the "Faithful" are concerned, they believe 
that progress and development after death are 
possible; and, consequently, reject the teaching 
that Death unalterably determines the moral 
and spiritual condition of souls. As far as the 
non-Faithful are concerned, they accept that 
teaching, and offer no prayers for them, on the 
assumption that it is impossible, or very doubt- 
ful, that they can advance to light and salva- 
tion. It is here that we part company with the 
Romanist and High-Anglican on this question. 

Turn now, for a moment, to the attitude of 
the Low-Churchman and Nonconformist to- 
wards Prayers for the Departed. They reject 
in toto the principle of praying for "faithful" or 
non-faithful ones after death. The meaning 
which they read into those words of Solomon 
causes them to suppose that Death is the great 
Stereotyper of mankind for a future of eternal 
bliss or eternal woe. "What," say they, "is the 
good of praying for any, 'faithful' or non-faith- 
ful, when once they have passed that boundary- 

205 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

line which renders any change of destiny im- 
possible! Our prayers for the saved are un- 
necessary; while those for departed unsaved are 
wholly unavailing. The latter in dying went 
outside the sphere in which the Love and Mercy 
of God can any longer operate in regard to 
them." And then comes the quotation of an- 
other text of Scripture, which, when the sense 
of it has been narrowed so as to make it agree 
with the words of Solomon, is supposed to 
clinch the matter — "Now is the accepted time; 
now is the day of salvation." It is useless to 
point out to such persons that "Now is the day 
of salvation," is not the same only now; and 
that, although a person by his disregard of God 
and goodness in this life may make the work of 
his salvation a very painful and difficult one 
hereafter, the work will not necessarily never be 
accomplished. Our Lord's inimitable parable of 
the Prodigal, and St. Peter's record of what the 
Saviour did after death in regard to ante-de- 
luvian sinners, negative this notion. 

The passage in question does not exclude the 
hope of recovery Beyond the Veil. It simply 
declares that the cultivation of the God-life with- 
in us is not to be postponed; that "now" is the 
time, and that no soul in this world is answer- 
ing to the purpose of his being, apart from God. 

206 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

But, to revert to the theological position of 
our Low-Church and Nonconformist brethren, 
is it not a very "big" assumption to assert that 
the Love and Mercy of God are brought to an 
ending for countless millions, at the grave ? We 
think so. How many persons go out of this life 
possessing that knowledge of God and Christ, 
which we believe to be essential to salvation and 
future blessedness? Very few; certainly not 
more than one in every thousand of the earth's 
population. Does God love them all? Oh! yes. 
His Christ said He "loved the world," and that, 
of course, must mean all the persons in the 
world. "Is it true that God loves them?" asks 
the logically-minded man who looks at facts. 
"You Christians of a certain School of thought 
tell me that there will be no saving work after 
death; and that this means non-salvation for the 
bulk of mankind. You tell me your God loves 
all. How very strange that (according to you) 
He should love all,' and yet place the many under 
such circumstances in earth-life, from geo- 
graphical, national and social considerations, 
as to preclude them from obtaining a saving 
knowledge of Himself! Is this compatible with 
the thought of a Divine Love for all the world ?" 

There appears to us no escape from the an- 
swer — "No; it is incompatible — absolutely, 

207 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

hopelessly incompatible with any idea of Divine 
Love; if so be there is no salvation of this 
greatest portion of the human race after death." 
But there is another very formidable argu- 
ment which we must bring to bear against those 
Christians who deny the exercise of God's sav- 
ing grace beyond the grave. It is this. If it be 
denied that those who departed this life unsaved 
may, in the great Purpose of God, be finally 
brought to salvation, how is it possible for there 
to be a fulfillment of those hundreds of glorious 
prophecies found in Holy Writ, that Goodness 
is ultimately to triumph over evil; that Christ 
is to overcome sin and spiritual death, and that 
God is to be "all in all"? We contend that 
these prophecies can never be fulfilled, apart 
from the "Restitution of all things." If there 
be no salvation after death, it means that only a 
tiny proportion of the human race will possess 
"eternal life." In regard to inconceivable myr- 
iads, God, at the time of their dying, was not 
"all" as far as they were concerned; and accord- 
ing to some, this condition of things can never 
be reversed. The corollary of this is plain to 
the logical mind — viz., that Christ and Holy 
Scripture promised far and away more than 
would ever come to pass. 

208 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Whether our friends can upset this conclu- 
sion, we leave it to be shown. 

In the meanwhile, all that has been written 
above will indicate how reasonable, how con- 
sistent with the spirit of Divine Love and the 
principles of Christ, are Prayers for the De- 
parted. The '"Protestant" theology discounte- 
nances the practice. It has done its best to 
divorce the idea from Christian thought and 
worship. From the Prayer Book of the Eng- 
lish Church it has cut out all those beautiful 
Prayers for the Departed, which stood in the 
Communion Office and the Burial Service of the 
first Prayer Book of 1549. It has altered (for 
the purpose of teaching men not to pray for the 
Departed) the words of the Invitation, as they 
stood before what is commonly called "the 
Church Militant Prayer." In the 1549 Prayer 
Book, the Invitation was — "Let us pray for the 
whole state of Christ's Church." The "whole 
state of Christ's Church" includes those believ- 
ers who are in this world and the far greater 
number who have passed hence. To pray for 
the "whole state" would embrace the latter, and 
so the Reformers altered the clause to what it 
is in our present Prayer Book — "the whole 
state of Christ's Church militant here in earth." 
The alteration is not a very ingenious one, be- 

209 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

cause the "Church militant here in earth" is not 
"the whole state of Christ's Church." It is but 
a very small part of it. The mainstay of Jesus 
is on the Other Side. 

The theology of the Romanist and the High- 
Anglican, on the other hand, countenances 
Prayer for the Departed, though only for the 
"Faithful" among them. That, too, fails to grip 
the essential principle of the Gospel of Jesus, 
which is the seeking and saving of that which 
is "lost." One would have imagined, in face 
of the Master's teaching in regard to leaving 
the folded sheep and going after the wandering 
one, that His Church, if she can only pray for 
one section of departed ones, would have chosen 
the non-faithful, rather than the "Faithful." 

Pray for both, we say: for the Christians who 
have gone hence, that a spiritual stimulus from 
us may be given to that perfecting work in 
them, which, begun in the earth-life, will be 
continued until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil, 
i. 6); yes, and for those countless millions 
of non-Christians in the Spirit- World, who may 
receive through us those telepathic influences, 
those vibrations of the Christ-mind and the 
Christ-spirit which may be contributory causes 
to the development of the God-life in them. 

Our questioner asks — What kind of Prayer 

210 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

can I use for one of these ? We would suggest 

a Prayer such as the following: — 

''Eternal Father, I come to Thee pleading 
for Thy blessing upon that dear one of 
mine whom Thou has called into other 
Life. I am sorrowful, and the shadow of 
bereavement rests darkly upon me; and I 
know that shadow cannot be lifted except 
by the light of Thy truth. O help me to 
realize those great facts taught by Jesus, 
that all who have passed hence still live unto 
Thee, and that Thy Divine Love enwraps 
them all. Grant to my heart the assur- 
ance that he whom I love is loved by Thee; 
that he whom I long to help and bless will 
be blessed by Thee; and that the life, so 
linked with mine in past years, will not be 
a life detached from me in the Hereafter. 
Father, my love for him cries out for some 
possibility of expression. I want to bless 
him by my love. Wilt Thou grant me this 
power? Thou hast revealed to us how 
mighty are the influences of mind and 
spirit. O let the vibrations of my love 
(sanctified as they are by association with 
Thee) reach my dear one in his spirit-life. 
Let them be the humble means whereby 
he may be better attuned to receive the in- 

211 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Rowings of Thine own love, and better able 
to love Thee. I pray, too, that it may be 
permitted to him to know that I am pray- 
ing for him. Let that knowledge help him 
as his spirit advances; and let it tend to en- 
kindle in him the desire to pray also. May 
his prayers for me and mine for him main- 
tain that bond of love which united us here 
on earth. 

"And O, dear Lord, I pray for his ad- 
vancement and happiness. Grant that all 
imperfect ideas of Thee and of Thy truth 
may disappear from his mind. Deliver him 
from all the warping influences of preju- 
dice and doubt and make him receptive to 
Divine light as Thou mayest vouchsafe it 
to him. May Thy Holy Spirit so illumi- 
nate him as to enable him to 'know Thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom 
Thou hast sent/ Grant, too, that whatever 
in him is good and noble may be expanded 
and perfected, and that whatever is weak 
and sinful in his character may be elimi- 
nated. Give him, I beseech Thee, rest and 
peace; that passing from moral and spirit- 
ual glory to still higher glory, he may at 
length become 'the spirit of a just man 

212 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

made perfect/ and grasp the crown of ever- 
lasting salvation. 

"I offer this prayer, Eternal Father, in 
the Name of Him Who told us Thou art 
Love. "Amen." 



213 



IX. If Christians depart this life to be with 
Christ, how can our prayers benefit them? Does 
He not know exactly what to do for them with- 
out our intercessions on their behalf? 

This question has been submitted to me again 
and again by correspondents. It is based upon 
two suppositions — first, that the departure of 
Christians from this life involves their immediate 
presence with Christ; and next, that their pres- 
ence with Christ renders all prayer for them un- 
necessary. 

But are these suppositions correct? Let us 
examine them. 

Does the departure of Christians from this 
life involve their immediate presence with 
Christ? The idea which is commonly held on 
this point is, that all who die in the faith of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, however small may be their 
spiritual attainments, and however little their 
character may have been developed, pass at 
the time of death into the highest sphere of 
life, and enjoy the companionship of the Sav- 
iour. The words of St. Paul, spoken in regard 
to what he himself anticipated — "Absent from 

214 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the body, and present with the Lord," "Hav- 
ing a desire to depart and to be with Christ" — 
are supposed to denote what will be the experi- 
ences of all Christians on leaving this world. 

The assumption is not logical. It is a uni- 
versal conclusion drawn from a particular prem- 
ise. Put into syllogistic form, it would stand 
thus: St. Paul, at dying, went to be with Christ; 
St. Paul was a Christian; therefore, all Chris- 
tians, at dying, will also go to be with Christ. 
The reader will detect how inconsequent this 
reasoning is. 

We admit that St. Paul did on leaving this 
world go to be with Jesus, and that every other 
Christian who departs this life with anything 
like the moral and spiritual attunement of that 
Apostle, will also go to be with Him; but that 
is a very different thing from supposing that all 
Christians pass at once from the earth-plane to 
the Christ-sphere. In the case of hundreds of 
thousands of Christians, their spiritual condi- 
tion would render it impossible. The law of 
the Spiritual World is that a person must be 
morally and spiritually adjusted to the sphere 
in which he lives, moves, and has his being. 

In the case of St. Paul, we have one whose 
moral and spiritual development while still in 
the flesh was such as equipped him for the high- 

215 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

est experiences of spirit-life. He was a man 
in whom the Christ-qualities of love and un- 
selfishness energized so magnificently, that 
years and years of his life were characterized 
by the endurance of all sorts of hardship and 
self-denial for the sake of others. No grander 
words, denoting the height of moral excellence 
to which he had attained, were ever written by 
him than those in which he said — "I could wish 
that myself were accursed from Christ, for my 
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh" 
(Rom. ix. 3). What a contrast is presented 
in the moral development of St. Paul and that 
of a once celebrated preacher, whose published 
sermon records the awful remark — that he be- 
lieved one of the joys of the redeemed in 
Heaven would be to everlastingly contemplate 
the miseries of the damned ! Again, St. Paul 
was a man who was absolutely in spiritual touch 
with Christ. He could write — "I live; yet not 
I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii. 20); "For 
to me to live is Christ" (Phil. i. 21). He was, 
moreover, one who, before he left this world, 
was so spiritually and psychically developed as 
to enable him to come into close association 
with the higher spheres of Spirit life. He was 
"caught up to the third Heaven, and heard un- 

216 



^^^"^^^^™ 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

speakable words, which it is not possible for a 
man to utter" (See 2 Cor. xii. 1-4). 

That such an one should, at death, go at once 
to the presence and companionship of the Sav- 
iour, appears to us to be the most reasonable of 
thoughts. The A-postle in whom was the Christ, 
when he was yet in the earth-life, would, of 
necessity, be in the Christ-sphere as soon as he 
had stepped into spirit-life. 

But in regard to that great number of Chris- 
tians who exhibit all sorts of moral defects, in 
whom, perchance, exists the spirit of selfishness 
and unlovingness; who could not say — in spite 
of their belief in the Saviour — "For to me to 
live is Christ," can we really think that Death 
will usher such into the Christ-sphere — the 
Sphere of highest Spiritual experience? 

Nay, we think not. Their faith in the Sav- 
iour will put them on the King's highway to 
that blissful experience; but there must be the 
ascension from sphere to sphere of higher moral 
and spiritual attainment before the goal will be 
reached. There may be vouchsafed to them at 
times a Vision of the Christ as they move on- 
ward and upward; but only, we believe, will they 
"be with Christ," in the sense in which St. Paul 
used the words, when they, by the grace of God, 
shall have become fitted for the Christ-sphere. 

217 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

The Christian Church, therefore, in bidding 
us pray for the ''Faithful Departed," is quite 
right. She implies thereby that Christians, 
when they go hence, do not at once attain such 
perfection as to place them in no need of our 
prayers for them. 

But the supposition that there is no necessity 
to pray for those Departed ones who may en- 
joy the Presence of Christ, on the grounds that 
He knows exactly what to do for them, without 
our intercessions on their behalf — is a very un- 
founded one. If it had not been so often put 
forth as an argument against praying for de- 
parted Christians, we should have thought it 
impossible for any believer in Prayer of any 
kind to seriously advance it. The supposition 
proves too much; it amounts to an argument 
against praying for Christians who are in this life. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ, without our interces- 
sions on their behalf, knows exactly what to do 
for Christians, whether they be here on earth, 
or have passed into the Spiritual World. Are 
we, therefore, not to pray for the Christians in 
this life? Let us be consistent. 

If there be no need for us to pray for departed 
Christians, because Christ knows what to do for 
them without our telling Him, then, by the 
same reasoning, there is no need for Christians 

218 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

in this world to pray for one another. The sup- 
position, as we have said, proves too much. 

A conception of the true significance of 
Prayer — that it is no expedient for informing 
Christ of our wants, and no means of inducing 
Him to be gracious to us, but that it is a Di- 
vinely appointed method whereby the soul of 
the one who prays, or that of the one who is 
prayed for, may be made receptive of blessing 
— a conception of this — would sweep away the 
erroneous notion which is present in the mind 
of this questioner. 

We pray for Christians here and for Chris- 
tians There, because Prayer is a Mind-impulse 
which, when touched by the Holy Spirit of God, 
can affect other minds, and move them towards 
growth and attunement with the Higher. 

"Brethren, pray for me," wrote St. Paul in 
whom was the Christ. "Pray for us," say those 
saintly ones who have gone hence to be with 
Jesus, "we are amid the Alps of the Celestial, 
but there are still higher peaks on which the 
Master has bidden us meet Him. Every prayer 
you breathe for us sends a God-vibration to our 
advancing spirit; and from the heights above us, 
and from the earth-plane below us; we catch 
the impulse that constitutes the very inspiration 
of our being — 'Excelsior/ " 

219 



X. On what grounds can we base our belief that 
Jesus is not only, pre-eminently, a son of God, but 
the son of God, in the sense of being Divine ? 

This question is submitted by one who ex- 
periences a difficulty in maintaining his belief in 
our Lord's Divinity, in the face of such facts as 
that Jesus said — "My Father is greater than I," 
"I ascend unto my God and your God;" that He 
Himself prayed to God, just as He taught us to 
do, and that in His agony on the cross, He cried 
— "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
me?" etc. 

Is not this, it is asked, incompatible with the 
thought of Christ as Divine? In praying to 
God, was Jesus praying to Himself as the God- 
head? 

Now, the most satisfactory way of arriving at 
a conclusion on this all-important question con- 
cerning the Being of Jesus, will be, we think, 
to ascertain what it was that Christ actually 
stated in regard to Himself. Did He claim to be 
the Son of God in the sense of being Divine? 
Did He assert that He stood in such close and 
intimate relationship with God, and possessed 

220 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

such super-human prerogatives, as lifted Him 
above the position of all men, however exalted? 
In a word, did Jesus teach, plainly and unequiv- 
ocally, that although He walked this earth as "a 
Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," He 
was, nevertheless, a Being Divine in a sense in 
which no other man can be? Do His words 
justify the statements concerning Him, made 
in the Nicene Creed — that He is "God of God, 
Light of Light, Very God of Very God"? 
It will be acknowledged that if we can know 
what Jesus said of Himself, His statements must 
be of infinitely greater value in forming a true 
opinion of Him, than any statements concern- 
ing Him subsequently made by others. 

The Church's witness to the Divinity of our 
Lord — borne as it has been all through the cen- 
turies, and reaching as far back as the times 
of the Apostolic writers of the New Testament 
— is of immense value as affording the evidence 
that the Apostles themselves — the ones who 
were in the best position of knowing what Jesus 
said — believed Him to be the Divine Son of 
God, and founded Christian Churches on this 
belief. 

"In Him dwelleth all the fullness (the Ple- 
roma) of the Godhead bodily" (Col. ii. 9), was 
St. Paul's definition concerning the Being of 

221 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Christ; and it was accepted by all those early 
Christian communities from whom the Churches 
of Christendom afterwards developed. It is in- 
conceivable that this view of Jesus, so unpar- 
alleled by anything that had ever been at- 
tributed to a religious teacher, would have char- 
acterized Christianity at its starting point, had it 
not expressed the teaching of Jesus Himself. 

We can understand and account for the fact 
that, as the centuries rolled on, doctrines which 
were not truthful representations of what the 
Master taught, were imported into the teaching 
of the Christian Churches; but we cannot imag- 
ine that Christianity started its career on a huge 
misunderstanding concerning Christ. 

It must be remembered that the ascription of 
Divinity to a man was abhorrent and blasphem- 
ous to the mind of a Jew; and it is recorded 
that Jesus was once in danger of being stoned 
for assuming for Himself a Name applied to 
God. Consequently, it appears to us, that noth- 
ing will account for the fact that St. Paul, St. 
Peter, St. John, and other early Christian teach- 
ers placed the Divinity of Jesus in the forefront 
of their teaching, except that the authorization 
for their so doing came from Christ Himself. 

Further, it is not conceivable, in view of the 
unquestioned moral and intellectual excellence 

222 



■■"■ 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of Christ, that He could either have supposed 
Himself to be that which He was not, or could 
have suffered others whom He taught to enter- 
tain an idea concerning His Being which was 
flagrantly erroneous, or could have spoken so 
ambiguously as to leave it uncertain what He 
meant. 

If Christ led men to account Him Divine, 
when He knew He was not so, then He was not 
good; if He proclaimed His Divinity, not be- 
cause it was a fact, but because He was under 
an hallucination, then He was no dependable 
Teacher of truth. 

Moreover, Jesus did that which no other 
teacher of Religion had ever done, and which 
no one since has ever dared to do. He focussed 
Religion in Himself. He made Himself the Gos- 
pel He preached. "I am the Way, the Truth, 
the Life, the Door, the Light, the Bread of 
Heaven," etc. This exaltation of Himself; this 
concentration of men's thoughts on His own 
Person; this assumption of a dignity pertaining 
only to God, which so shocked and outraged 
the ideas of the Jewish High Priest, is wholly 
inexplicable, except on the supposition that 
Jesus was the Divine Son of God. 

If He were not Divine, the Jews who crucified 

223 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Him were right in accounting Him the greatest 
of all egotists, deceivers, and blasphemers. 

The Christian Religion, founded by Christ 
and propagated by His immediate followers, 
was started on the belief of His Divinity. This 
conception constituted the Foundation Princi- 
ple of the Christian Faith. Whence this idea 
so alien to the Jewish mind? Whence this per- 
sistent conviction on the part of those who con- 
sorted with Jesus, and of those who subse- 
quently came into contact with the latter? 

Surely, there can be but one reasonable and 
logical answer, viz., that Christ Himself must 
have taught, and did teach, that He was the 
Son of God in the sense of being Divine. 

It is on this ground we base our belief in His 
Divinity. The testimony of the Church on this 
point throughout the ages is of weight only as 
we can regard it as being in agreement with 
the utterances of Jesus. 

But this view of the matter suggests two other 
and very important questions — Have we a 
record of what Jesus said on this vital point 
concerning His Being? — Have we sufficient 
grounds for believing that the record is a re- 
liable statement of what He said? 

With regard to the first of these questions, 
we claim to possess a record of a great number 

224 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

of the statements made by our Lord Jesus 
Christ; and among them many — far more than 
is commonly realized — which deal with the ques- 
tion of His own Being and position. 

I have carefully gathered and systematized 
these particular statements of His, in order 
that it may be seen at a glance how great they 
are. They appear in the following pages. They 
have been collected from the four Gospels; 
which books were written by men whose oppor- 
tunities of knowing what the Master actually 
said must have been far greater than those of 
others who lived at later periods. The Chris- 
tian Church has always regarded these Gospels 
as being the most precious and most authorita- 
tive part of the Holy Scriptures, because she 
has viewed them as containing a truthful repre- 
sentation of what Jesus actually taught. For 
this reason she has enjoined upon her members 
to stand at the reading of "the Gospel;" and in 
this way, and in some cases by the association 
of solemn ritual with the reading, she has 
marked her belief that the Gospels possess a 
value and an authority far and away beyond 
that of any other book of the Bible. And if it 
can be reasonably believed that these four books 
do faithfully embody what Christ taught, then, 
surely, they must be the best court of appeal 

225 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

to which we can betake ourselves in the settle- 
ment of the question of what Christ really is; for 
in the very nature of things, what Christ said of 
Himself is of far greater importance and weight 
than anything which individual men or bodies 
of men may have said concerning Him. 

The other question — Have we sufficient 
grounds for believing that the Gospels are re- 
liable records of what Jesus said? — is also of 
supreme importance. 

We believe that in the Gospels as they stand 
in the Greek — the language in which they were 
originally presented — with the correction of cer- 
tain mistranslations which were introduced to 
support preconceived ideas of the translators, 
we have a faithful representation of what Jesus 
taught. The grounds on which we base this 
belief are these: 

(I.) The writers of the four Gospels were 
persons who were in the position of being able to 
give a truthful record of Christ's teaching. 

They were men who were contemporary with 
Jesus; and three of them— including St. Peter, 
whose amanuensis only St. Mark was — were His 
Apostles, and for several years His constant 
companions. The other — St. Luke — although 
not an Apostle, was in close association with 
the Apostles, and his prefatory remarks in the 

226 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Gospel and in the Acts, show how he, a highly 
educated and cultured man, carefully gathered 
from those "who from the beginning were eye- 
witnesses, and ministers of the word," "all that 
Jesus began both to do and teach." 

It would be difficult to conceive of any per- 
sons having been more favorably circum- 
stanced than these four Evangelists, for giving 
to the world a true account of what Jesus 
taught. 

We are aware, of course, that attempts have 
been made from time to time during recent 
years, to show that the Gospels were not written 
by the ones whose names they bear; but the tes- 
timony of the Christian Church in the past on 
this point has not been upset. The Post-Apos- 
tolic Church accepted without question these 
Gospel records as the genuine work of the four 
Evangelists; and that Church embraced many 
who had been in contact with the writers them- 
selves. 

Had a fraud been practised, in attributing to 
distinguished leaders of Christianity works 
which they had not written, it is exceedingly 
improbable that the fraud would not have been 
exposed. 

Further, when the Canon of the New Testa- 
ment was defined. A. D. 400. by a Council of 

227 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Christian Bishops, presided over by Augustine, 
a large number of narratives concerning the 
life and teaching of Jesus, as well as many epis- 
tles written to Christian Communities, were 
placed before the Council. From these, the 
books to constitute the Canon were to be se- 
lected. The principle adopted by the selectors 
was that only such writings should be admitted 
into the Canon, as could be shown to be the 
work of Apostles, or of men who had been in 
close association with the Apostles. 

Subjected to this rule, great numbers of the 
writings were rejected, and even books which 
are now accounted as parts of the New Testa- 
ment — viz., the Epistles 2 Peter and James, 
and the Book of the Revelation — were placed 
outside the Canon, on the ground that the 
Council was not satisfied on the point of their 
authorship. 

But the four Gospels were unhesitatingly in- 
cluded in the Canon, as being the genuine works 
of those with whose names they were identified. 

Surely, this is an indication that these books 
are, indeed, authentic records of Christ! The 
exclusion of the three books mentioned above 
from the Sacred Canon, shows that a careful 
sifting process characterized the proceedings of 
this Council; which renders the fact of the re- 

228 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

tention of the four Gospels the more significant. 

(II.) Our enhanced knowledge with regard 
to Psychic and Spiritual realities and ascer- 
tained facts as to the powers of Mind, render it 
absolutely credible that the four Evangelists 
received such mental illumination as to make them 
truthful recorders of our Lord's teaching. 

An objection against accepting the statements 
contained in the Gospels, as embodying the ac- 
tual teaching of Jesus, has sometimes been 
urged in the following way. 

"If it be granted that the four Evangelists 
wrote these books, how can we be sure that 
what they allege to have been spoken by Jesus, 
was really said by Him ? With the full intention 
of writing 'the truth, the whole truth, and noth- 
ing but the truth,' may not these men have un- 
consciously misrepresented His teaching? We 
know from experience how easy it is for those 
who report the utterances of another to obscure 
the significance of what was said. May this not 
have been the case with the Evangelists ? Writ- 
ing, as they did, after a lapse of several years, 
may not their memory on some points have 
failed them? May not their own imperfect no- 
tions of truth have colored their account of 
the Master's presentment of it? As members 
of a Christian Community which held exalted 

229 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ideas of Jesus, may not their minds have re- 
ceived a bias which caused them to import into 
the words of Him a meaning which He did not 
intend?" 

This is a perfectly honest and reasonable ob- 
jection; and unless it can be satisfactorily met, 
there must always linger behind the fact that 
certain writers represented our Lord as having 
said that He was Divine, the thought that they 
may have misunderstood the true significance of 
His words. 

Have we any grounds for supposing that 
these recorders of the words of Jesus were in any 
way safeguarded against a misrepresentation of 
His utterances? Can we, in the light of pres- 
ent-day Scientific knowledge, based on facts 
which it is possible for us to verify, believe that 
these men received such mental guidance, il- 
lumination and control as equipped them for 
being the reliable witnesses to the world of One 
Who knew the truth as no other has ever 
known it? 

We answer — Yes, those Gospel-writers, we 
believe, did receive the help of which we have 
spoken; and we ground this conviction on no 
vague theory of inspiration, but on an idea which 
is able to appeal to existing facts in support of 
its credibility. 

230 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

Psychology is a subject which has been 
scientifically investigated of late years. The re- 
sult of that investigation has been to demon- 
strate that it is possible for the mind of one 
person to project itself as thoughts, sensations 
and impulses to the mind of another, in such a 
way as to produce a mental conjunction be- 
tween projector and receiver. All considera- 
tions of time and distance are obliterated in this 
possibility. Persons physically separated from 
one another are able to be in mental and psychic 
touch. The distinct thoughts of the one may 
be transmitted to the other. 

Even the feelings and sensations of the one 
may be registered by the other. A person may 
be at the Antipodes, and yet may convey to an- 
other, who is in spiritual tune with him, a defi- 
nite idea, an impression, an actual physical sensa- 
tion corresponding with a sensation experienced 
by the projector. 

There is no need to give illustrations in sub- 
stantiation of this statement. Those who are 
abreast of present-day Science know perfectly 
well the possibilities connected with Telepathy 
and Telsesthesia. 

Those who do not know these facts, and are 
open-minded enough to wish to know about 
them, can refer to Professor Myers' work — 

231 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

"Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily 
Death." 

Now, these facts as to the possibilities of 
Mind, appear to us to present the very best of 
reasons for believing that in the Gospel-narra- 
tives we have a reliable statement of what our 
Lord actually taught. 

Take the circumstances of the case. 

It has been scientifically attested that 
thoughts and impressions from the mind of one 
can be conveyed to the mind of another. If 
this is possible in regard to men and men, surely 
it must be possible in regard to Christ and men. 
No one will be prepared to say that Jesus' men- 
tal possibilities are inferior to those of ordinary 
individuals. 

Further, the advancement of a being to Spirit- 
life enhances the mental powers, because of the 
removal of restrictions connected with the 
Physical. 

When the Evangelists wrote their accounts 
of Jesus, He had freed Himself from the re- 
strictions of the Physical, and had passed into 
Spirit-life. 

Consequently, He was then better able to 
mentally influence them, than He had been be- 
fore. His words — "It is expedient for you that 

232 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

I go away" — are more significant than many 
suppose. 

Again, it is unthinkable that Christ, after 
passing from earth-life, was not desirous that men 
should know the truth about Himself; and if 
He possessed the power of directing and illu- 
minating the minds of those who were to be 
the recorders of His sayings for the centuries, is 
it not the most reasonable of all thoughts to 
suppose He exercised that power? 

Lastly, He actually promised that He would 
mentally assist the writers of the Gospels in 
their work — at all events as far as the three 
Apostolic narrators were concerned. 

Shortly before the close of His earthly min- 
istry, He said, "These things have I spoken 
unto you, being yet present with you; but the 
Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father 
will send in my name, He shall teach you all 
things and bring all things to your remembrance 
whatsoever I have said unto you" (John xiv. 25 
and 26). 

This promise, and those words of Jesus 
spoken from the plane of Spirit-life — "Lo, / am 
with you all the days until the consummation of 
the age" — conduct to a conclusion which ap- 
pears to us an incontrovertible one. 

It is this — that when the Evangelists sat down 

233 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

to write the story of what the Christ of God 
had spoken as He moved across the stage of 
Time on His mission to bless man for Eternity, 
He from the domain of enhanced being flashed 
upon the minds of those earnest, Christ-loving 
men a mighty influence from His own Mind; an 
influence which for the time being mentally 
abstracted them from the present, and trans- 
ported them to the past, so that in thought they 
were listening again to the words of One Who 
spake as never man had before spoken; an in- 
fluence which quickened their memory, un- 
ravelled the entanglements of their ideas, made 
clear to them the significance of what He had 
said, and limned upon the sensitive-plate of their 
spirit a faithful portraiture of Himself. 

In this way, do we regard the four Gospels as 
being invested with an authority which sur- 
passes that of any other sacred writings. They 
claim to be, not the statement of what distin- 
guished men conceived the Christ to be, but a 
record of what He Himself said He is. 

In the following summary, which will show 
how great and embracive were the statements 
made by Christ concerning Himself, we do not 
give all the references to the several points to 
be found in the Gospels. Our aim is to cause 

234 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

the Reader to realize, with ease, how much was 
said by Jesus. 

Christ's Statements Concerning Himself — His 
Being and His Powers — As Recorded in the Gospels. 

1. That He is the Son of Man. (Matt. xvi. 13; 

Mark x. 45 ; Luke ix. 22 ; John i. 57 ; etc.) 

2. That He was greater than the Temple. 

(Matt. xii. 6.) 

3. That in Him the Law, and the Prophets had 

their fulfillment. (Matt. v. 17; Lu. iv. 21; 
xxiv. 44.) 

4. That He possessed supreme authority as a 
Teacher, with the right to re-interpret Divine 
Law. (Matt. v. 21 and 22; Mark ii. 28; Lu. 

vi. 47-49; etc 

5. That He is the Christ. (Matt. xvi. 20; xxiii. 

8 and 10; Mark viii. 29 and 30; John iv. 25 
and 26.) 

6. That He is a King. (Matt. xix. 28; xxvii. 11 ; 

Mark xv. 2 ; Lu. xxiii. 3 ; John xviii. 36 and 
37; etc.) 

7. That He had power to appoint a Kingdom. 

(Lu. xxii. 29.) 

8. That He was sinless. (John vii. 18; viii. 46.) 

9. That He possessed prophetic powers. 

(a) Foretold His betrayal. (Matt. xx. 18; 
xxvi. 24; Mark ix. 31; x. 33; xiv. 21; Lu. 
ix. 44; xxii. 22; John vi. 70; xiii. 21 ; etc.) 

(b) Foretold the denial of St. Peter. (Matt, 
xxvi. 34; Mark xiv. 30; Lu. xxii. 34; John 
xiii. 38.) 

(c) Foretold the details connected with His 

235 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

death. (Matt. xx. 19; Luke xxii. 37; John 
viii. 28; etc.) 

(d) Foretold His rising and perfecting 
through Physical death. (Matt. xvii. 9 and 
23; Lu. xiii. 32; etc.) 

(e) Foretold the martyrdom of St. James, St. 
John and St. Peter. (Matt. xx. 23; Mark 
x. 39; John xxi. 18.) 

(f) Foretold that the circumstance of the 
woman's anointing of Him would be uni- 
versally and perpetually remembered. 
(Matt. xxvi. 13; Mark xiv. 9.) 

(g) P'oretold the incident of the man and a 
pitcher of water. (Mark. xiv. 13; Lu. xxii. 

10.) 

(h) Foretold the particulars connected with 
the siege and overthrow of Jerusalem. 
(Matt. xxiv. 2 ; Mark xiii. 2 ; Lu. xix. 43 ; 
xxi. 6; xxi. 20 and 24.) 

10. That He possessed highly-developed Psychic 
powers. 

(a) Cognition ; surpassing the power of the 
physical senses. (Mark ix. 33-34; John iv. 
17 and 18.) 

(b) Clairvoyant power. (Lu. x. 18; John i. 

48.) 

(c) Sensitiveness and responsiveness to 
Psychic influences. (Lu. viii. 45 and 46.) 

11. That He possessed the power of speaking to 
the Departed. (John v. 25 and 28.) 

12. That He is the Son of God. (Matt. xvi. 16- 
18; xix. 17; xxii. 42-45; xxvi. 63 and 64; 
xxviii. 19 ; Mark x. 18 ; xii. 35-37 ; xiii. 32 ; Lu. 

236 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

xx. 41-44; xxii. 70; John iii. 16, 17 and 18; 
v. 19-23, 25, 26; vi. 40; viii. 35 and 36; ix. 35 
and 37; xi. 4; xiv. 13; xvii. 1.) 

13. That He proceeded from God. (John viii. 
42; xvi. 2^ and 28; xvii. 8.) 

14. That He had been in Heaven. (John iii. 13 ; 

vi - 33> 38, 5J-62.) 

15. That He had seen God. (John vi. 46.) 

16. That He is one with God. (John x. 30, 38; 
xii. 45; xiii. 20, 31 and 32; xiv. 1, 7, 9, 10, 11, 
20; xvii. 11, 21, 22.) 

17. That He is the sharer of God's glory, power 
and honor. (Matt. xvi. 27; Mark viii. 38; 
Lu. ix. 26; xxii. 69; John v. 23; viii. 58; xvi. 
15; xvii. 5, 10.) 

18. That He is the possessor of inherent Divine- 
life. (John xi. 25 ; xiv. 6.) 

19. That thing's done by the Father are also 
done by Him. (John v. 19.) 

20. That the mystery concerning God is known 
only to Him, and that He is the Revealer of 
God. (Matt. xi. 27; Lu. x. 22; John iii. 11 and 
12; v. 20; viii. 38, 40; x. 15; xii. 49 and 50; 
xvi. 25.) 

21. That He assumed the Divine Name, and 
called Himself "Lord." (Mark v. 19; Lu. 
vi. 5; xix. 31; John xiii. 13 and 14.) 

22. That He holds the Headship over every- 
thing-. (Matt. xi. 27; xxviii. 18; Lu. x. 22; 
John xvi. 15; xvii. 2.) 

23. That He wields authority over Angels. 
(Matt. xiii. 41; xvi. 27; xxiv. 31; xxv. 31; 
Mark xiii. 2y.) 

237 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

24. That He could exercise power over evil spirit- 
beings Baifwpia who obsessed men and 
women. (Matt. xii. 27 and 28; Mark i. 23 
and 25; v. 8; ix. 25; xvi. 17; Lu. v. 33 and 
35 ; xi. 20.) 

25. That He had control over Physical nature. 
(Matt. xvii. 27; xxi. 19; Mark iv. 39; v. 41; 
xi. 14; xvi. 18; Lu. v. 4; x. 19; xiii. 12; xvii. 
14 ; xviii. 42 ; John iv. 50 ; v. 8 ; xi. 43 ; xxi. 6 ; 
etc.) 

26. That He is the Drawer of men. (Matt, xxiii. 
37; Lu. xiii. 34; John xii. 32.) 

27. That He is the Rewarder of men. (Matt. xvi. 
27.) 

28. That the judgment of mankind has been as- 
signed to Him. (Matt. xxv. 32; John v. 22 
and 27) ix. 39.) 

29. That men's hostile attitude to His, teaching 
will lay them under judgment. (John xii. 48.) 

30. That He holds power to exclude from the 
Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. vii. 21 and 23.) 

31. That men's attainment of honor hereafter 
is dependent upon their confession of Him. 
(Lu. xii. 8.) 

32. That hereafter He will advance men. (John 
vi. 39, 40, 44 and 54.) 

33. That He could bestow the Holy Spirit. (John 
xv. 26; xvi. 7; xx. 22.) 

34. That the Holy Spirit should glorify Him. 
(John xvi. 14.) 

35. That He can quicken the dead. (John v. 21.) 

36. That He has power to forgive sins. (Matt. 

238 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

ix. 2 and 6; Mark ii. 5 and 10; Lu. v. 20 and 
24; Lu. vii. 47 and 48.) 

37. That He can answer Prayer. (John xiv. 13 
and 14.) 

38. That Prayer in His Name is accepted by 
God. (John xvi. 23 and 24.) 

39. That, although He would pass out of earth- 
life, He would still be able to be constantly 
present with men in that life. (Matt, xviii. 
20; xxviii. 20.) 

40. That He is the imparter of Divine life. (John 
iv. 14; vi. 35; x. 10; x. 28; xiv. 19; etc.) 

41. That He is the Giver of Rest and Peace. 
(Matt. xi. 28; Lu. vii. 50; viii. 48; John xiv. 
2J\ xvi. 33; xx. 19, 21 and 26.) 

42. That He is the Spiritual Food of men. (John 

vi- 33, 35, 5i, 57, 58.) 

43. That He is the Light of the world. (John 
viii. 12 ; ix. 5 ; xii. 46.) 

44. That He is the Saviour of the whole human 
race. (John xii. 47.) 

45. That His mission of saving extends to all 
that is lost. (Matt, xviii. 11 and 12; Lu. ix. 
56 ; xv. 4, 6, 8, 9, and 32 ; xix. 10.) 

46. That man's union with God will be possible 
only through Him. (John xiv. 6.) 

47. That Divine Truth is personified in Him. 
(John xiv. 6 and 7.) 

48. That the Anastasis (advance) of man at 
Physical death, and his attainment of "the 
super-abundant life" are identified with Him. 
(John xi. 23-26.) 

239 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

49. That Immortality is an impartation from 
Him. (John- vi. 50; xiv. 19; xv. 4 and 5.) 

Such, then, is the Christ, invested with all 
this grandeur and dignity of Divine Personality, 
as He created, we believe, the concept of Him- 
self in the minds of the men and women who 
listened to His words in the long ago. 

Such is He, also, as He stands forth on the 
pages of the sacred Gospels. Upon the minds 
of those chosen Evangelists He brought the im- 
pact of His own all-powerful Mind, that this 
concept of Himself might be fixed by them as 
an abiding witness to the centuries. When, as 
the Son of Man, He passed across the narrow 
stage of earthly existence as God's Missioner 
of Love, His glory was bedimmed. To bless 
man, and to bring him into closest contact with 
the Divine, He Himself had to become Man. 
The glorious Spirit-Son of God had to circum- 
scribe Himself within the limitations of the 
Physical. The Divine in Him had to suffer a 
temporary eclipse, as He came within the 
shadows of earth. 

His Divine power might be used for the 
blessing of others, but not for the blessing of 
Himself. It was the price he paid for Love. 

And so Jesus, although He was Divine, 

240 



PROBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

was hungry and thirsty, and grew weary, and 
wept, and was tempted, and agonized, and 
prayed, and cried despairingly, as only a man 
could do. And thus the "emptied" Son of God 
lived out His beautiful life of Love among us, 
unrecognized and misunderstood by the many. 

But that Jesus is living now in a World of 
fuller life, where the restrictions of the Physical 
do not exist, and nought bedims the glory of 
His Being. 

Many are turning their spiritual eyes to Him; 
and one day He, as the Divine One, shall draw 
to Himself — as He said He would — the love 
and devotion of all men; for the old and crude 
ideas of God and His Purpose are passing 
away, the horizon of knowledge is becoming 
wider, the Morning Stars of the Spiritual are 
gleaming more brightly in the firmament of 
human experience. And when the night- 
shadow shall have gone, and the mists of nar- 
rowness and error shall have been scared away 
by the Sunrise of Larger Hope, then shall the 
Christ be revealed to all as "The Desire of the 
nations" — the "Light of the World," the Light 
of God Himself. 

THE END. 



241 



APri 15 1300 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



